Architecture and Society: Ismail Seragelclin
Architecture and Society: Ismail Seragelclin
Architecture and Society: Ismail Seragelclin
Ismail Seragelclin
The Most Social of the Arts? There is no art form that is as completely intertwined
with a particular society as its architectural expression: for it is art that is physically
rooted in the geographic location of that society. For the members of that society —
and this is to no way deny that the society may be far from an integrated entity —
it reflects both their aspirations, their artistic sensibility, and their economic wealth;
the level of advancement of their technology; the elements of climate and topogra
phy, and the structure of their social organisation. Not only does the architecture of
any people physically express all this, being the net result of all the contradictions
that society embodies, but is also helps shape the vision of the society of itself. It is
both a mirror of that society's activities and an instrument shaping its identity.
Within this context, however, it is not clear to what extent the architectural
profession, per se, is responsible for moulding taste, or merely for carrying it out. As
Allsopp has stated: "The failure of modem architecture in recent years is only partly the
fault of architects. The main burden of blame for inhumane architecture must rest upon
clients who have failed to educate themselves for the great responsibilities they undertake1
It is for this reason that the AKAA has consciously underlined the collective
responsibility of all involved in the proccess of creating a building which is deserv
ing of recognition.
It is undeniable that the taste of the governing elite is likely to dominate the
pattern of buildings that give an area its easily identifiable character and that serve
as landmarks and as exemplars of what the state's dominant elite promotes. As Oleg
Grabar has noted, the form of the cities in the Muslim world was defined by the
middle class, while the monuments were defined by the elite. 2 This is not to say that
artistic expression is totally constrained by societal reality. Without question artists
— be they architects, painters or sculptors — play a role in defining, articulating and
improving society's perception of itself and its perception of its aesthetic reality. As
Hamilton once put it: "The artist, whether his medium is verbal, pictorial, plastic, or
musical, is the man equipped with radar to penetrate the cultural fogs of the age."3
However, architects are more constrained than other artists. They have to
contend with clients and financing, and they have to contend with the need for
their creations to function properly and to meet a rigorous set of codes and restric
tions. They interact with society much more than other artists, and they cannot
function in isolation. Hence, architecture is by far the most closely linked of the arts
View of Amran, Yemen. Architecture, to the reality of society in its multiplicity of dimensions, be they economic, social,
whether done by the medium of architects or cultural, political, institutional or religious.
only builders, is by necessity a physical mirror
of a society's social, economic, cultural, legal Architecture and the "Image of Progress". In the context of the architecture of the
and technological realities as well as an Muslim world, I would like to emphasise that a central part of the problem which we
adaptation to the physical environment. confront in our Muslim culture today is that most of the ruling elites of our societies
* Extract from Proceedings of Architectural Education in the Islamic World, Seminar Ten in the series -
Architectural Transformations in the Islamic World, Granada, Spain, April 21-25, 1986. Published
by Concept Media for the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, Singapore, 1986, pp. 75-88.
have gone through a process of disassociation from their cultural roots. This has led
to the dichotomisation of cultural perception, where the historic heritage — cultural,
religious, spiritual — is identified with the past, backwardness and poverty, while
the image of "progress" is borrowed from elsewhere, namely the West.
Unless and until architects and intellectuals generally succeed in providing the
ruling elites of Muslim societies with an alternative image of progress, they will
continue to pay lip service to the need for cultural authenticity while their actions
will speak more loudly than their words as they hurry to adopt the most superficial
aspects of Western culture.
Preservation of the Heritage: What, Why, Ho<w, and for Whom? The preservation of
tradition works at different levels, reflects if anything, differing contemporary func
tions and ideological needs (e.g. the need for legitimacy) by ascendant elites or their
rivals. On one level, there is the effort to preserve the best examples of traditional
buildings as exemplars, sources of contemporary inspiration and/or custodians of
part of what its bearer regard as their contemporary cultural identity.
On a different level, the preservation and reuse of individual buildings in con
temporary society raises serious functional and ideological problems. Yet, such adap
tive reuse appears to be the only possibility of maintaining vitality for the buildings
and avoiding the museum approach to important elements of an organic living city.
Elsewhere, this author has analysed the approach and economics of dealing with
adaptive reuse. 5 Whole seminars have been devoted to the subject 6 and many
learned treatises have dealt with its different aspects and, indeed, one is struck by
the vast number of little noticed examples of such successful renovation and reuse
found in any single country. 8
The preservation of a single building, whether reused or not, is different from the
preservation of the character of an area and, here, different criteria come into play.
Of these, the sense of urban space is a fundamental one, as is the question of scale,
proportions, street alignments, fenestration, articulation of volumes, relations be
tween solids and voids, and, most of all, activities permitted in the public space and
inter-relationship between the public and private domains.
This level of dealing with the historic past, underlines the types of skills that a
practising architect should aquire to work in the Muslim world today, where ferment
and change are important. In such situations of change and ferment society at large
seeks to anchor its headlong rush into the future in its past and the assertion of its
own individualism, i.e., its identity as witnessed by the greatness of its exemplars.
Decoding the Symbols of the Past. Architects must acquire the sophistication to read
the symbolic content of this heritage in a manner that enriches their ability to
produce relevant buildings for today and tomorrow, and to guide the "authentifica-
tion" efforts between the twin shoals of Kitsch and alien inappropriateness.
This sophistication can only come through a strengthened educational process
which engenders in future architects the critical sense required to decode the
symbolic content of the past in a realistic, as opposed to an ideologically mystifying,
fashion. This, of course, necessitates a broad knowledge of the methodology as well
as the content of historical studies, a sense of the growth of societies as a process of
successive attempts at totalisation and above all an ability to see the built environ
ment of the past as it was perceived by contemporaries.
Societies in Transition. The societies of the Muslim world are inescapably societies
in transition, however much some members of those societies may try to avoid this
basic process by denying it, or by absolutising a past which exists only in their own
minds as a counterweight to the present reality they deny and the future which they
fear. The demographic, technical, economic, cultural, political and ideological
components of this transition process are well known. Drowning in a flood of
Western technology and cultural imports that are frequently ill-matched to local
conditions and insensitive to cultural traditions, Muslim societies are today strug
gling to create a cultural environment that provides them with a viable sense of self-
identity and which is suited to regional and national conditions. Authenticity for an
Indonesian will not be the same as authenticity for a Moroccan. Yet there is this fine
thread of commonality of the nature of the search with variability of the conditions
under which it is undertaken. This is part of the creative genius of the Muslim
culture, whose hallmarks have always been unity with diversity. Contemporary
"regionalism" must express itself in new and contemporary ways. This truism must
be restated frequently in the face of a strong current that seeks refuge in perpetuating
the myth that traditional vernacular architecture is enough. This "escape into the
past" must be forced to recognise the scale and technology that increasingly link and
undergird the urban built environment. Slavish copying of the past is not the
answer. For those who would try, the dimensions of modern technology and its
related infrastructural requirements will quickly remind them that the path of
excellence requires creativity.
It flows from the above that the role of the architect in societies in transition such
as the Muslim world is currently undergoing is indeed a pivotal one, both in defining
the society's sense of its own reality, as well as in refining its perceptions of its taste
and its authentic cultural expression.
There is much to learn from folk architecture but under no circumstance should
we delude ourselves into trying to maintain and copy previous solutions that may
have been perfectly rational and functional for social and economic circumstances
that prevailed in society at a certain point in time. We must acknowledge the need
for important changes in architectural forms as facets of the physical expression of
the changes wrought by economic and social development. 9