Space, Time: IdentityCarmen Popescu

Perceived as a symbol of the world and experienced as a powerful frame that shapes the

cognitive process, architecture is intimately related to identity. It embodies a narrative

that can be appropriated and turned into a ‘reflective’ discourse. Identity represents a key

concept of the modern era, and its appraisal results from changing perception of space

and time. These changes engendered a loss of references and, hence, a need for identity.

Pictured as immutable, identity is in reality a subjective, evolving concept, defined by the

process of identification. The latter appears as a more relevant category, producing

various responses and thus explaining the multifaceted aspect of the images of identity.

Constructed under the direct guidance of power and culture, the images of identity are

forged through the intimate collaboration of ideology and aesthetics. Conceptually, the

primary referents of identification are subsumed by space and time. Yet these two also

constitute the fundamental coordinates of architecture. Hence architecture appears as a

privileged medium of expression, representing both an instrument and a vehicle that

conveys identity. Time brings a perspectival understanding of tradition, and thereby

transforms history into a major referent. Space exalts the values of appropriateness and

adequacy to the site, perceived as a matrix shaping the characteristics of its inhabitants

and of their artefacts, as well. In architectural terms, the concept of time catalysed the

creation of historicisms and various ‘national styles’, while the concept of space favoured

all forms of regionalisms and ‘localisms’.

Keywords: Identity; Identification; Architectural Narrative; Appropriateness; Modernity;

Space; Time; Historicism; Architectural Nationalism; ‘National Styles’; Architectural

Regionalism; Localism; Contextualism

Art and architectural historian, Carmen Popescu is associate researcher at the Centre of Research in Art History

‘Andre Chastel’ (CNRS, Paris). She has worked extensively on identity in architecture, publishing numerous

articles. She is the author of Le style national roumain. Construire une nation a travers l’architecture (Presses

Universitaires de Rennes/Simetria, 2004). She was the scientific director of two international conferences on

nationalisms and regionalisms in architecture (Bucharest, 1999, 2000), and edited the proceedings (National and

Regional in Architecture: Between History and Practice , Bucharest: Simetria, 2002). Carmen Popescu is currently

working on a project on ‘Modernity in the Balkans: Progress and Specificity’. Correspondence to: Carmen

Popescu, Associate Researcher, Centre of Research in Art History ‘Andre Chastel’ (PARIS), 7, rue de la Mare,

F-75020 Paris, France. Tel/Fax: �/33 1 43 15 09 63; E-mail: crmv@noos.fr

ISSN 1460-8944 (print)/ISSN 1469-9907 (online) # 2006 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/14608940600842060

National Identities

Vol. 8, No. 3, September 2006, pp. 189�206

Identity has become a frequent topic in the architectural debates of the last few years.

There are two reasons for this apparently sudden interest for the subject. On the one

hand, it is a consequence of the ‘after-modern’ syndrome, with the crisis of

modernism in architecture reinforced by the growing effects of globalisation. As a

result, a certain identitarian dimension of architecture began to be explored at length

in architectural criticism and architectural history. On the other hand, the numerous

recent studies dedicated to nationalist theories and ideologies in the humanities have

initiated a thorough reconsideration of architecture as an instrument and vehicle

of identity. This latter perspective was the principal one adopted by historians

of architecture. This topic, with its twofold structure, is not new. The ‘nationality’ of

certain styles and the ‘national’ or ‘regional’ character of architectural production

stimulated discussion all through the nineteenth century and the beginning of the

twentieth, but beginning in the interwar years, the subject seemed progressively to

lose relevance. A waning of interest in these issues resulted from a shift of attitude,

but also*and particularly*from the marginalisation induced by the supporters of

the Modern Movement.

Linking architecture and identity is not an artificial approach. In ‘Building

Dwelling Thinking’, Heidegger (1971a [1954]) defined ‘dwelling’ as mere existence on

earth (‘staying with things’). As a corollary, architecture appears as an embodiment of

the world, as Norberg-Schulz (1996 [1983]) remarked in his reading of Heidegger’s

text. While inhabiting the world, man shapes it according to its own image:

Dinocrates’s myth established an allegorical iconography of this vision. Thus, while

the architect is pictured as a demiurge, architecture appears to contain the idea of

identity in se . Seroux d’Agincourt (1810, p. 2) perpetuated this concept, affirming

that architecture identifies itself with man: ‘[I]dentified in some way with man, since

the need to use it is born in the same time with him.’1 At the same time, if man

identifies himself with architecture, it is not due to its abstract capacity to delimitate

space (in a Heideggerian sense), but to its emotional charge. ‘Architecture is not

merely a science of the rule and compass,’ as Ruskin remarked (1893, p. 1), ‘it does

not consist only in the observation of the just rule, or of fair proportion: it is, or

ought to be, a science of feeling more than of rule, a ministry to the mind, more than

to the eye.’

Addressing itself to the mind, architecture embodies a narrative*not only does it

tell a story, but it is also able to symbolise history: ‘[Architecture] connects forgotten

and following ages with each other, and half constitutes the identity, as it concentrates

the sympathy, of nations’ (Ruskin, 1901, p. 340). The geographer Vidal de la Blache

gives a phenomenological interpretation of this narrative capacity of architecture, be

it an individual edifice or a whole settlement: ‘A city, a village, a house, is a descriptive

element; however one thinks about their form and their material, or their adaptation

of way of life, be it rural or urban, agricultural or grazing, they enlighten the

relationship between man and the soil’ (Vidal de la Blache, 1995, p. 181).2 And he

concludes that the character (‘expression’) of a place is defined by the presence of

human settlements.

190 C. Popescu

Identity or Identification?

Architecture and identity, individual and collective, appear to be intrinsically

connected. This is true particularly for collective identities since groups identify

themselves with the place in which they evolve (live, work, etc.). As Marc Augie

(1992) observes, groups need to think simultaneously about their identity and their

relationship of internal cohesion, and thus they need to symbolise the constituents of

their shared identity. Hence apprehending space serves to build the collective identity.

As a constructed concept, identity is subjective, evolving in time, as the subject

evolves. In his Anthropology, Kant (1996, p. 26) affirmed:

I, as a thinking being and as a being endowed with senses, am one and the samesubject. However, as an object of inner empirical intuition, so far as I am inwardlyaffected by temporal sensations (simultaneous or successive), I conceptualizemyself only as I appear to myself, not as a thing-in-itself. Such cognition dependson a temporal condition which is not a concept of the intellect . . . .

Since identity is continuously revised, it appears that the process of identification that

reflects this continuous re-examination is more relevant. Identification represents the

way the subject projects itself and is responsible for the multifaceted substance of

identity. This mechanism is even more visible within the identity of groups, activating

a continuous dynamic of identification, as James Tully (1995, p. 11) observes:

‘[E]very culture is continuously contested, imagined and reimagined, transformed,

negotiated. . . . Identity, and consequently, the signification of every culture is

aspectival.’

Therefore, this special issue of National Identities could have been entitled

‘Architecture and Identification’ in order to stress the fact that the articles published

here treat mechanisms of identity related to architecture, and not an immutable

identity reflected through architecture. Identification is a volitional process, the

relevance of which is more significant within a group, since collective identity is

explicitly constructed. The multiple manifestations engendered by this process have a

common denominator: the aspiration towards identity or, in other words, the will of

identification. The diversity of manifestations is determined by the evolution of

support for identification (ideological and/or aesthetic) that is intimately connected

to the thought system of the time. The case studies presented in this special issue

reflect this diversity, revealing some of the multiple aspects of identity expressed

through architecture.

Identity in the Age of Modernity

Identity is a key concept of the modern era.3 It acquired this status due to the

enormous changes that turned modernity into a powerful category: industrialisation,

the perspective of history and the pre-eminence of scientific thinking. These three

factors brought with them unprecedented transformations, which were experienced

as an irrevocable rupture that Hannah Arendt (1993 [1961]) defined as a ‘loss of

National Identities 191

tradition’. Indeed, the ‘gap between past and future’, as Arendt called it, seemed

irreparable, since the modern era changed the perception, and later on the

conception, of the two major axes for apprehending the world: space and time.

Industrialisation, with all its consequences, reinforced the longing for a ‘paradise lost’:

spoiled landscape, uprooted populations, savage urbanisation. At the same time, the

developing network of transportation, particularly railroads, brought an unprece-

dented mobility that compacted time and vastly expanded the distances that could be

covered. History was analysed as a philosophical subject, providing a unified

conception of humanity, while evolutionism and taxonomy irrevocably influenced

other fields of thought and creation. Progress, retrospective vision and an analytical

approach defined modernity.

The change of the perception of space and time, compounded by changes in the

way they were apprehended, engendered a loss of references. In traditional society,

the world is represented as a closed, and therefore apprehensible, space (Augie, 1992,

p. 59). The explosion of the traditional scheme generated a need for identity in order

to establish new references. Modern man is torn between past*to which he no

longer belongs*and future*in which he can only project himself. Arendt (1993

[1961], p. 7) employed a parable borrowed from Franz Kafka to describe this

situation of crisis:

He has two antagonists: the first presses him from behind, from the origin. Thesecond blocks the road ahead. He gives battle to both. To be sure, the first supportshim in the fight with the second, for he wants to push him forward, and in thesame way the second supports him in his fight with the first, since he drives himback. But it is only theoretically so. For it is not only the two antagonists who arethere, but he himself as well, and who really knows his intentions? His dream,though, is that sometime, in an unguarded moment*and this would require anight darker than any night has ever been yet*he will jump out of the fighting lineand be promoted, on the account of his experience in fighting, to the position ofumpire over his antagonists in their fight with each other.4

The architect of the Modern era, like Kafka’s man, longs to overcome the antagonism

between the past (understood as tradition) and the future (understood as

modernity). Identitarian architecture embodies this aspiration, reconciling tradition

and modernity.

From Identity to Identitarian

The ‘loss of tradition’ engendered a quest for identity in a double sense. The concept

progressively acquired more significance in the writings of the time, becoming an

operational notion and gaining particular relevance in the context of developing

nationalist theories. As a corollary, a need for identity emerged; concretely, this meant

that identity was not to be revealed, but fabricated by defining its symbolical

constituents. Among these, architecture played an important role from the beginning;

due to its representativeness, it seemed to be one of the most efficient instruments in

192 C. Popescu

creating and conveying identity. According to Hegel’s Philosophy of History, a

fundamental work in shaping the concept of Volksgeist (developed earlier by Herder),

only people that are well-defined could aspire to a place in the ‘universal history’.

Hence, identity appears as a necessity for all people, be they ‘fully conscious of what

they were’ or, particularly, ‘but half awakened’ (Hegel, 1988 [1952], p. 153). In this

context, as Gellner (1983) and Anderson (1991) observed, identity is constructed

under the direct guidance of the binomial Power and Culture. This is an intimate

collaboration since ideology and aesthetics work together to forge the structure and

the narrative of identitarian images.

Defining their characteristics, nations ‘but half awakened’ become ‘fully con-

scious’*a process paralleling that of the individual: a child who begins to use the

pronoun I and thereby replaces feeling by thinking (Kant, 1996, p. 9). If the child

discovers himself or herself, the nation ‘rediscovers’ itself by defining its

characteristics*a fabricated cognitive process through which identity is invented

with the aid of symbolic elements (Thiesse, 1999). These elements therefore become

identitarian instruments; it is not that they necessarily reflect identity, but they are

empowered to represent it. The ‘loss of tradition’ induced by the modern era affects

architecture on two interconnected levels, one individual, the other collective. The

change in the perception (and conception) of space and time raises the question of

how to repair the rupture, while consciousness of the historical perspective turns

architecture into an identitarian instrument. If architecture was previously connected

allusively to identity (a metaphor of the human condition), now it becomes explicitly

involved in building it.

Architecture: Space and Time5

Two primary referents structure the process of identification in architecture: space

and time. Both terms determine the way tradition is conceptualised: the dynamic of

temporality engenders its substance and the spatial limits determine its recipient. It

was natural that the ‘loss of tradition’ would demand reparation of its altered

components, but space and time represent fundamental coordinates of architecture,

too. Space in its abstract, mathematical conception is also a delimited place

(Heidegger, 1971 [1954]); time is an experience of short duration, related to covering

the delimited space, but also is a testimony of long duration, in the sense of

durability.

It is in their lasting witness against men, in their quiet contrast with the transitionalcharacter of all things, in the strength which, through the lapses of seasons and

times, and the decline and birth of dynasties, and the changing of the face of theearth and of the limits of the sea . . . that we are to look for the real light and colour,and preciousness of architecture. (Ruskin, 1901, pp. 340�341)

What the makers of identity exploit in these constitutive elements of architecture is

not their abstract qualities, but their emotional dimension. These include the socially

National Identities 193

experienced nature of place (Frampton, 1996 [1974]) and the evocative force of time.

In their immediate relation to architecture, these two elements are not equally

relevant. Space is pre-emptive not only because its experience is immediate, but also

because it creates social places, hence Gregotti elevates ‘place-making to the primal

architectural act, the origin’ (Nesbitt, 1996, p. 49). In contrast with the immediateness

of the perception of space in architecture, time requires a retrospective under-

standing. This difference, manifested on a cognitive level, emerges also in the manner

in which the two elements act as referents. Space as a referent, understood in this

context as nature, stimulates imitation (to be understood also as appropriateness),

while time, with its multiple layers, requires interpretation. This different initial

approach is to a great extent responsible for the pre-eminence of ‘new’ or ‘critical’

regionalism6 and all kind of localisms in the historiography of modern architecture.

‘Authenticity’, as framed by modernism, is the key term in understanding this

‘theoretical conflict’.7 Not only was the act of imitation close from the origins of

architecture as established since Vitruvius, but it also led to appropriateness: a

synonym for ‘good’ architecture. On the contrary, the very notion of interpretation

indicates an alteration, hence a condemnable architecture, as all historicisms were

categorised. Furthermore, this theoretical conflict finds a solid justification in the

long series of architectural treatises from antiquity to the modern age,8 which have

established the idea of geographical determinism.

The relationship constructed between the two referents, space and time, allows

another reading. The original architecture that imitates nature by using natural

materials and copying natural forms is ‘primitive’ in the sense of not elaborated. Not

only is stone architecture more elaborated, but it is also conceptual because it

employs abstract forms. Time plays a significant part in the conception of stone

architecture: its materials are durable and its shape is the result of successive

experiences as well as of theoretical thinking. Viollet-le-Duc’s Histoire de l’habitation

humaine opened with these two typologies: a shelter improvised with close-growing

trees (the ‘primitive hut’; see Figure 1) and an elaborated masonry house (Figure 2),

replacing a wooden dwelling destroyed by the storm (Viollet-le-Duc, 1986 [1875]).

There are no such distinctions as ‘primitive’ and ‘elaborated’ in Viollet-le-Duc’s

Vitruvian perspective; however, the description of the two edifices, and particularly of

the methods of their building, makes them implicit.

Space and time could be interpreted as paradigms of modernity and tradition.

When the issue of identity turns into a veritable quest, ‘moderns’ have to confront

two opponents: ‘traditionalists’, who defend the great tradition, and ‘identitarians’,

comprising ‘nationalists’ as well as ‘regionalist’ militants. The latter category becomes

their favourite target for two main reasons. On the one hand, ‘identitarians’ claim to

be modern too, not only because they oppose the ‘traditionalist’ approach, but also

because they also assert the principle of appropriateness, a founding concept for the

‘moderns’. Yet their appropriateness refers to the subject of the desired identity

(national, regional, etc.). On the other hand, they lack authority since their ‘tradition’

194 C. Popescu

does not have the legitimacy of the ‘great tradition’. Thus, they are neither real

‘traditionalists’ nor real ‘moderns’.

Building Identity: History and Geography

The thread of tradition broke as the modern age progressed (Arendt, 1993 [1961],

p. 14); this was less a rupture than a revolution in the interpretation of the very

concept of tradition. Antiquity, the ‘great tradition’, has been progressively supplanted

by humbler narratives. When Seroux d’Agincourt started his tour of Europe in 1777,

his intention was to follow the ‘broken thread of tradition’, as he called it, which had

been abandoned by Winckelmann at the era of the decay of arts. He wanted to

demonstrate that this thread was never broken, and searched for tradition ‘in the

middle of the most crude structures, in the least important and most fragile of

monuments’ (Seroux d’Agincourt, 1810, p. 5).9 Not only did the French erudite

attempt to establish a continuous chronology for the history of art, he also broadened

its field by including multiple traditions like the Gothic of the Northern Europe or

the Moorish of Spain.

Figure 1 The natural hut as the first shelter invented by the humankind (Viollet-le-Duc,

1986 [1875]).

National Identities 195

Like history, architecture became both an object of study and an instrument of

knowledge. It also benefited from the methods developed in various fields of science,

turning styles into efficient categories. As Seroux d’Agincourt (1810, p. vi) put it:

‘[I]nstead of seeking to determine the age of a work of Art by the scholarly nature of

the subject, one should explain the subject by the style of the monument and by the

norms of the Art.’10 History, with its chronological perspective, and geography, with

its variation of climates, constituted the double grid in studying architecture. This

combined vision was not new, having been used since antiquity; the novelty was that

henceforth its use was directed to articulate the difference, the distinction, whose

importance for defining identity (individual as well as collective) was pointed out by

both Kant and Hegel. The rhetoric of the difference was extensively exploited in

world’s fairs, which thus contributed to the concept of identitarian architecture.

Encoded through the grid of history and geography, the architectural image became

recognisable; when recognisability was judged insufficient, quotations from famous

examples reinforced its symbolic dimension. Power and culture turn architecture into

both a vehicle and an instrument of identity. As a vehicle, it conveys the features of

the sought after identity, contributing to shape it in the spirit of the group; as an

instrument, it imposes a certain image of identity, supposed to function as a model.

Figure 2 The masonry house: an evolved architectural design that replaces the wooden

house (Viollet-le-Duc, 1986 [1875]).

196 C. Popescu

Referents of Identification

To resume, time and space are the major referents used to create identitarian images

in architecture. Time is related to history and thus brings legitimacy to the

identitarian construction, which appears as ‘rooted’ in the past or ‘nourished’ by

it. Time introduces a perspectival view in the understanding of the concept of

tradition. The process of identification is determined by the dynamics of temporality.

The architectural responses are summed up in all forms of historicism and ‘national

styles’. Space is related to geography, which endows the identitarian construction with

an analytical spirit and appropriateness. Geography represents the contextual

approach, and the process of identification is determined by a spatial matrix.

Architectural responses are recapitulated in the various manifestations of regionalism.

Both approaches are founded on doctrines: time exalts ideology while space favours

aesthetics. One invokes the genius of history, the other, the genius loci. Identification

through time tends to transform architecture into an ideological instrument; hence

the image is explicitly a construction. Identification through space employs

architecture as a conveyor of identity, pretending to ‘authenticity’. This does not

mean that the architectural image is less artificial since construction is required by the

functioning of the mechanisms of identification. In both cases, the process of

identification is founded on the power of architecture’s power of representation.

Schematically, time as a referent introduces a ‘wilful’ power of representation; space

enhances the ‘innate’ power of representation.

Considered from the point of view of the identitarian quest, the use of time as a

referent seems to have a certain pre-eminence. Chronologically, it is intimately related

to the birth of the modern era, developed as a corollary to historical perspective. Also,

it responds better teleologically to the ‘need of identity’ due to its use of constructed

images. Given that the relation to the site preoccupied architects from very early

times, identification through space could be seen as precursory. However, this

priority is deceptive because the place was rather a subject of appropriateness than an

object of identification as it became with the historical regionalism. Nevertheless,

discussing pre-eminence is irrelevant since space and time are complementary

coordinates, just as history and geography form a complete set of instruments of

knowledge. If identitarian architecture was founded on time as a referent, it never

ignored the spatial dimension, as indicated by Ruskin’s evocative work Poetry of

Architecture or the Architecture of the Nations of Europe Considered in Its Association

with Natural Scenery and National Character (Ruskin, 1893). More than that, in

defining identities, the historical perspective progressively evolves towards ethno-

graphy, thereby proposing a more complex understanding that brings together

territories and temporality.

In the postwar era, the crisis of modernity induced a crisis of identity, destabilizing

the mechanics of identification. Could identity still be a relevant topic? More than

that: could one possibly imagine that architecture could (and should) express it? The

first reaction seemed to be a total rejection of the topic: postwar society, absorbed in

National Identities 197

building a new world and mere reconstruction, did not have time for particularisms.

What was actually rejected was not the topic itself, but its apprehension. On the one

hand, abhorred by the modernists and already explored in all its extent by

traditionalists, narrative rhetoric was replaced by a conceptual approach. On the

other hand, at a time when the relevance of group identity was questioned the process

of identification became a matter of individuality, thereby provoking parallel

interpretations. Therefore, architectural responses multiply, assembling manifesta-

tions that seem unrelated, like brutalism, contextualism, postmodernism, organic

architecture and so on.

Necessity or Fashion?

What is the real motivation of revisiting the past or imitating nature? How much do

historicism, regionalism and so on respond to a real need of identity and how much

do they merely echo architectural trends? Ruskin (1893, p. 2) deplored the prevalence

of the latter:

This department of the science [the identitarian character of architecture], perhaps

regarded by some who have no ideas beyond stone and mortar as chimerical, and

by others who think nothing necessary but truth and proportion as useless, is at a

miserably low ebb in England. And what is the consequence? We have Corinthian

columns placed besides pilasters of no order at all, surmounted by monstrosified

pepperboxes, Gothic in form and Grecian in detail, in a building nominally and

peculiarly ‘National’; we have Swiss cottages, falsely and calumniously so entitled,

dropped in the brick-fields round the metropolis . . . .

What was the real meaning of the orientalising motives employed in creating a

‘National Style’ in Romanian architecture around 1900? Did they fulfil the aspiration

to define the ‘spirit of the nation’ (by interpreting the Ottoman heritage) or did they

simply imitate Orientalism, so fashionable in Western Europe? (Popescu, 2004). The

answer is difficult to ascertain. Since the references to space and time in architecture

involve both ideology and aesthetics, it would be tempting to associate the first with

the quest for identity and the latter with artistic emulation. Yet how could one

dissociate ideology from aesthetics in fabricating identitarian images? Pugin’s (1841)

concept of ‘picturesque utility’ is a perfect illustration of the intimate functioning of

this tandem: ‘the smallest detail should have a meaning or have a purpose’.

This axiological value clarifies the difference between ‘National Styles’ and

historicism in general: both are nourished by the past, but the first look for

legitimacy by quoting old monuments, while the latter seek norms and principles. In

emerging states, inside Europe as well as out, historicist architecture was perceived

(and used) as a symbol of the nation. In countries with a well-defined national

history (i.e., the Hegelian ‘fully conscious of what they were’) historicism served to

question the very concept of creation, thus feeding the debate on aesthetics. The

axiological value*of the ensemble as well as of each compounding element*

198 C. Popescu

appears to be crucial in the case of images pretending to an identitarian status; hence

the dispute between ‘engaged art’ and ‘art for art’s sake’.

Notes on Time: Writing History

The very fact that the modern era is characterised by a ‘loss of tradition’ demonstrates

that temporality represents a central notion in defining it. In this context, one should

measure the importance of the founding of history of arts as an academic discipline at

the beginning of the nineteenth century.11 Not only did it introduce an historical

perspective, but it implicitly opened the path toward an identitarian vision based on

Hegel’s concept of ‘peculiar national genius’, which he described as a concrete

manifestation ‘idiosyncrasy of spirit’.12 Temporality motivated history of arts also by

hurrying the historian to register monuments before time erased them: ‘The beating

of the large wings of time erases everything,’ noted Seroux d’Agincourt (1810) in the

‘prospectus’ of his study.13 Thus, by guaranteeing durability, history of arts could

itself be understood as an identitarian enterprise; hence the architect who aspires to

apprehend the ‘spirit’ of the community he represents acts often as both the creator

of an identitarian architecture (expressed as ‘national’ or ‘regional’ styles) and the

historian of past tradition. His position reinforces the connection between history

and architecture, where the latter is supposed to reflect or to concentrate the first.

Being so knowledgeable, he risks at the same time the abuse of history in his work;

thus his creation tends to be too ‘bookish’ (in the sense of narrative), or even worse, it

could turn into pastiche.

Ruskin’s (1901) term ‘lamp of memory’ helped him explain at length that history

and architecture are intimately connected. An edifice ‘massively built’, consequently

evoking durability, and ‘chased with bas-reliefs of our . . . battles’ is better than ‘a

thousand histories’, asserted the architect (Ruskin, 1901, p. 336). He proclaimed

architecture as a readable object, its decoration playing the role of the narration in

history: ‘better the rudest work that tells a story or records a fact, than the richest

without meaning’ (Ruskin, 1901, p. 334). The comparison of architecture to a book

was a current metaphor in the nineteenth century, rooted in Goethe’s description of

Strasbourg cathedral (1772). In his essay on ‘The Book and the Building’, Neil Levine

(1982) points out the complexity of this metaphor, linking Hugo’s theory of

architecture (defending monuments as recipients of collective memory) to Lab-

rouste’s use of inscriptions for the Sainte-Genevieve library in Paris. ‘The history of

architecture is a history of writing,’ explained Hugo: ‘the earliest raised stone slabs or

menhirs were ‘‘letters’’ and thus the first step was the creation of an ‘‘alphabet’’’

(quoted in Levine, 1982, p. 149). The use of inscriptions appears thus as highly

symbolic, especially when the edifice represents itself a symbol of the community: not

only do they enclose a narrative, but they become part of the tectonics of the

architecture.

Identitarian architecture employs structural details and decoration, often quoted

from illustrious examples, as markers of belonging. Therefore, ‘National Styles’ in the

National Identities 199

emerging countries combine a ‘specific’ decoration with a ‘universal’ structure (i.e., in

the Balkans or in Asia); the academic compositions imported from the Western

centres of culture are adorned with details inspired by local heritage that confer on

them the quality of a ‘national’ architecture. The aesthetic eclecticism of such edifices

could be understood as an ideological strategy; in order to be readable abroad as well

as at home, they adopt a lingua franca , particularised by certain expressions of the

‘local dialect’.

Manipulating historical narratives can lead to aesthetical confusion: ‘our culture is

a mixture made up of elements from all earlier cultures, consequently our modern

architectural style should also be a mixture of every conceivable style of architecture

from every time and nation,’ deplored Semper (1989, p. 267). This criticism not only

concerned the realm of ‘art for art’s sake’; it applied to the ‘engaged’ architecture as

well: a profusion of readable references could eventually hide the message. Investing

architecture with the power of an historical narrative equals the writing of history:

creating an architecture able to reflect and represent the Volksgeist is a proof of self-

consciousness (in the Hegelian sense), thus opening the gates of universal history.

Writing history does not imply solely the past: the present and the future are

concerned as well. Nourished by past traditions, the architecture of the self-

consciousness aspires to be a legacy for the future generations (Ruskin, 1901, pp.

326�327, 337�338)*a vision that Bergson translated as ‘the past gnawing

incessantly into the future’ (quoted in Giedion, 1967 [1940], p. xliii). Yet in doing

so, it becomes an architecture of the eternally present. ‘Spirit is immortal; with it

there is no past, no future, but an essential now ’ (Hegel, 1988 [1952], p. 190); the

monumental architecture of the 1930s and 1940s is a product of this eternally present.

Notes on Space: Determinism and Appropriateness

The relationship between architecture and space is obvious. The myth of the

primitive hut, on the one hand, and the belief in the determinism of particular

features on human artefacts (comforted by the Hippocratic theory linking humoral

psychology with the geographical position of people on earth (Kaufmann, 2004, p.

23)), on the other, pleads for the relevance of spatial influence. More than that, space

is a matrix that survives the ephemeral productions that it moulds: ‘Geography has

preceded, subsist and will endure, while our civilisations will pass away’ (Le

Corbusier, 1959, p. 132).14

Space is a multilayered concept that supports several interpretations. In other

words, as well as the abstract notion of space, there are specific spaces: nature, place,

geography, milieu, site, context, environment. Each notion designates a different

degree of the ‘intimate solidarity’, as Vidal de la Blache (1995, p. 117) called it, uniting

beings to their setting. Architecture responds differently to each of them: vernacular

language (generically using local materials), ‘old’ and ‘new’ regionalisms, contex-

tuality, organic architecture, ecological architecture and so on. In the same way that

‘human geography’ largely influenced the creation of regionalist architecture at the

200 C. Popescu

end of the nineteenth century, the emergence of the ‘new geography’, which rejects the

older notion of space as unvarying, has undoubtedly contributed to the reconsidera-

tion to all the forms of ‘new’ or ‘critical’ regionalism. All these various responses find

motivation in the fact that architecture, as Vincent Scully (2003, p. 198) puts it, is

‘only part of one large human art, . . . of what must be regarded as the fundamental

art, which is the shaping of the physical environment and of living in it’.

There are three principles governing the relationship between architecture and

space: imitation, determinism and appropriateness. Imitation is linked to the idea of

nature and thus to the mythic origin of architecture, to the primitive hut.

Architecture imitates nature, which functions as a paradigm (‘history is the

development of the idea of spirit in time, such as nature is a development of this

idea in space’ (Hegel, 1988 [1952], p. 186)). Meanwhile, nature’s capacity to shape

things leads to determinism: matter engenders form. ‘Materials guiding the hand of

man’ is a statement discussed by geographers (like the founder of the ‘human

geography’: Vidal de la Blache) as well as art historians (the most notorious being

Henri Focillon’s study of the creative process, Vie des formes (Focillon, 1934)).

Consequently, architecture is determined by the choice of materials, but not solely,

since the particular features of a region or site (climate, geography, etc.) influence it,

too. The architectural response to this influence is appropriateness.

Is this identity? Or is it a search for harmony, or mere determinism? The answer

depends, again, on the axiological value of the established relation. Favouring

geography as a concept determines an identitarian position. Geography participates,

together with history, in building a complete discourse of knowledge. Regionalism

and ‘National Styles’, in their second phase, adopted this approach: while using the

space as a referent of identification, they stressed the human factor. Thus, ethnicity

occupies a primordial place in their approach, but if the space concerned by the joint

discourse of geography and history turns into a space of confinement, then the

approach risks becoming dangerous (Foucault, 1980, p. 73). Favouring the idea of

nature, or the more neutral notion of site, implies the immediateness of the dialogue,

without any symbolic dimension. It implies recuperating the ‘authenticity’ of the

origins, finding the sincerity of the architectural act; hence vernacular is praised as a

zero degree of architecture. Modernists are attracted by such an approach. One year

after the crucial experience in Greece, at the CIAM IV conference, Siegfried Giedion

wrote in the French journal Cahiers d’Art : ‘What today’s architecture seeks and what

many do not yet understand, is simply that it tends to consider the site, while at the

same time boldly constructing an abstract edifice, as it was done here [in Greece]’

(Giedion, 1934, p. 78).15

Notes on Conceptual Thinking: New Significance?

Paradoxically, conceptual thinking is employed to fight abstraction. As Scully (2003,

p. 260) notices, the crisis of modernism was induced by its propensity to abstraction.

Parallel to this, the explosion of the notions of space and time under the influence of

National Identities 201

modern physics (Arendt, 1993 [1961], pp. 55�56) generated a crisis of the concept of

modernity.16 Not only has society lost its points of reference, but distrusts the very

idea of them. The idiosyncrasy of modernist thinking provoked a ‘loss of space’

(Norberg-Schulz, 1980), doubled by the overabundant spatiality of the ‘surmoder-

nity’ that multiplied the ‘non-spaces’ (Augie, 1992). Temporality ceased to be

perceived as a continuous progress; the modern man seemed finally to have achieved

the ideal condition desired by Kafka’s character: he lives suspended above past and

future in the eternal present. This distanced, but also distant, glance is responsible for

a conceptual vision, while the lack of spatial relevance leads to contextualisation.

Under these circumstances, architecture seeks a new significance: its aspiration to

conceptual plasticity (like Le Corbusier’s or Paul Rudolph’s ‘objects’) and its revisited

relation to the past (like Venturi’s ‘semiotic’ architecture) represent but two of its

multiple facets. Writing on Venturi, Scully (2003, pp. 262�263) explains that the

architect ‘worked most through the principle of condensation’*a principle first

stated by Freud when ‘he described how what he called the ‘‘dream work’’ brought

‘‘dream thoughts’’ into ‘‘dream content’’’. The first stage of that process was the

condensation of opposites to form a ‘new unity’. There is a similarity between this

approach and the Kantian faculty of affinity as a category of the imagination; as

specified the philosopher, ‘the word affinity here reminds one of a catalytic

interaction found in chemistry, . . . analogous to an intellectual combination, which

links two elements specifically distinct from each other, but intimately affecting each

other and striving for unity (Kant, 1996, pp. 67�68).

Giedion, who nevertheless foresaw a ‘secret synthesis’ as a remedy for the crisis of

modernity, distrusted the ironic revisiting of the past, referring to it as ‘playboy

architecture’ (Giedion, 1967 [1940], p. vi). His position reminds one of the

nineteenth-century debates surrounding the axiological value of the architecture

inspired by the past; as an historian of modernism, he replaced this concept by the

‘inner meaning and content’ of the past (Giedion, 1967 [1940], p. xliv). Architecture

recycles previous experiences, recombining referents and mechanisms of identifica-

tion. History is written again, but under a ‘critical’ lens.

Space, Time: Identity

This article does not pretend to be a definitive interpretation of the topic of

‘architecture and identity’; instead, it has attempted to put it in perspective in order

to analyse its structure and highlight the similarities of its inner mechanisms along

with those of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Due to its limited length, this

introduction could appear too schematic or at least too abstract in the absence of

concrete examples. In any event, its aim is to offer a common background for the

articles gathered in this special issue of National Identities . Each of the six case studies

presents entirely different aspects of the topic, thus revealing its complexity.

In ‘Placing In-between: Thinking through Architecture in the Construction of

Colonial-Modern Identities’, Peter Scriver analyses the way in which architecture acts

202 C. Popescu

as a form of cognitive construct, forging common conceptual frameworks for

defining identity. In order to decode the complex mechanisms*cultural and

social*involved in this cognitive construction, he studies the reflection of

architectural experience through its novelistic representation and proposes a reading

of architecture as an ‘in-between’ space, an unbounded territory of cultural-crossing,

embodying the outside identity of groups. This might appear as a paradox since ‘in-

between’-ness transcends limits, while architectural thinking is about delimiting

space. Choosing India as an example (with all the topics concerning colonialism and

post-colonialism) allows Scriver to explore the intricacy of conceiving and perceiving

identity through architecture.

Daniel Le Couedic’s ‘The Garden of Illusions’ reveals a paradox, too*namely the

flourishing of regionalist architecture in France, a highly centralised state. Identity is

an invented concept and the French case clearly proves it: supported by the central

power, the architectural regional expression encountered, at its beginning at the end

of the nineteenth century, a certain resistance from the local population. Not only is

identity invented, it is also instrumentalised; by encouraging the development of

architectural regionalism, the central power gives the impression of an opened

governance, while it actually opposes to all form of autonomist/separatist longings,

smothering minority languages. Thus, regionalism is the Trojan horse of centralism.

Le Couedic explains this paradox to be the result of a confusion specific to France

between the territory of the state and that of the nation. The aestheticised vision of

this territory founded by the absolute monarchy in the eighteenth century (the

‘kingdom as a work of art’) secretly fed the ‘regionalist patchwork’: an admirable

country made of marvellous differences.

The American strategy in defining the identity of the nation appears completely

different, at least in the way architecture mirrors the concept. In ‘Nationalism,

Internationalism and the ‘‘Naturalisation’’ of Modern Architecture in the United

States, 1925�1940’, Keith Eggener introduces a post-colonialist interpretation, which

allows him to read the architectural and historiographical discourses as instruments

of identity. By comparing three different stages of these discourses, Eggener

demonstrates the crucial role played by the concept of ‘modernity’ in shaping the

American identity, the ‘American way of life’. He builds his demonstration upon

‘naturalisation’, which concealed the idea of modernity as a fruit of the American

genius (the innovative skyscraper being its perfect embodiment) with imported

European modernism. The ‘naturalisation’ of the ‘International Style’ (a label coined

by the American historiography) represented both a return to ‘natural’ values and a

politicised shift in conceiving identity. In this context, the rise of architectural

regionalism remained a mere topic of discussion, without being invested with an

identity value, applicable only for the ‘margins’ and not for a ‘central’ nation.

Indeed, regionalism became emblematic in ‘peripheral’ Brazil with the ‘Carioca

School’, which blended modernity and local tradition. Fernando Diniz Moreira’s

‘Lucio Costa: Tradition in the Architecture of Modern Brazil’ analyses this twofold

identity. The article can be read as symptomatic of the ‘periphery’ case in general,

National Identities 203

which defines itself through its particularisms by turning them into symbolic values.

A relevant parallel could thus be drawn with the ‘centre-complex’ of the American

case and the ‘naturalisation’ of the ‘International Style’. In Brazil, the acclimatisation

of modernist principles was intimately connected to the idea of nature, emphasising

the ‘authenticity’ and ‘honesty’ of this architecture. According to Lucio Costa, such

an architecture seems to emerge directly from the land. This statement reminds one

that the composer Villa Lobos recorded birdsongs along with folksongs, hence

equating nature with culture.

Since ‘authenticity’ represents one of the major categories in defining identity, this

special issue concludes with two articles on the topic, each reflecting a different level

of conceptualising its discourse. In ‘Periodisation According to Authenticity, or

Creating Vigorous Borderlines in Nineteenth-century Architectural History’, Stefan

Muthesius explores how historiography forged a chronological perspective based on

the criterion of ‘authenticity’. Founded in the nineteenth century, this discourse

exercised a durable influence in apprehending art history. By establishing a precise

limit between the ‘age of authenticity’ and the ‘age of inauthenticity’, this discourse

operated an ethical and an existential change, according to Muthesius. A change that

was responsible for both the increasing need of identification and the refusal of

history. The appraisal of ‘vernacular’ as an essential category in the artistic

conception was related directly to this change, as well. Thus, the ‘authentic’ values

of vernacular replaced the references of the historical styles.

Hilde Heynen’s article ‘Questioning Authenticity’ completes the analysis proposed

by Muthesius by asking how ‘authenticity’ relates to modernity. While ‘authenticity’

emerges as a significant impulse in twentieth-century culture (particularly expressed

as a ‘longing’), its multilayered structure can arouse contradictory interactions

between its different meanings. Heynen studies these conflictual interactions through

three examples of restoration of important modernist buildings; the choice enables

her to reveal the complexity and the vagueness of the concept of ‘authenticity’, which

is central for both modern architecture principles and the restoration’s ethics.

Modern architecture refuses the historical perspective, not only by denying the

historical styles, but also by placing itself in a limited duration. Yet when transformed

into a heritage object, its relationship to time appears problematic since the

conservation and the restoration practices fuse past and present. By questioning

‘authenticity’, Heynen eventually questions the notion of identity as related to

architecture: on the one hand, there is the identity of those who build and use

architecture and, on the other, there is the identity of the architectural object itself.

Notes

[1] ‘identifiee en quelque sorte avec l’homme, puisque le besoin d’y recourir prend naissance

avec lui’.

[2] ‘Une ville, un village, des maisons, sont un element descriptif; soit que l’on considere leur

forme et leur materiaux, leur adaptation a un genre de vie, rural ou urbain, agricole ou

herbager, ils jettent un jour sur les rapports de l’homme et du sol.’

204 C. Popescu

[3] I consider, as a convention, that the modern age begins with the nineteenth century and the

publishing of Hegel’s Philosophy of History : a fundamental work for defining the new era.

[4] The section comes from a text entitled HE , published in Kafka (1946).

[5] The title of this chapter and the title of the introductory text are purposely recycling

Giedion’s (1967 [1940]) title, Space, Time and Architecture . The reasons are twofold: to

propose an alternative reading of the two constitutive elements*space and time, and to

demonstrate that for the period studied (nineteenth and twentieth centuries) identity

represents a major axis of the history of architecture.

[6] While Lewis Mumford pointed it out, Giedion coined the term ‘new regionalism’ in 1954 in

the article of the same title published in Architecture, You and Me (Giedion, 1958). Alexander

Tzonis and Liane Lefaivre, followed by Kenneth Frampton, developed this ‘new regionalism’

into a ‘critical regionalism’.

[7] Alexander Tzonis (Lefaivre & Tzonis, 2003) used the label ‘chauvinistic’ to describe certain

manifestations of identitarian architecture in the nineteenth century.

[8] Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann analyses this long filiation in his Toward a Geography of Art

(Kaufmann, 2004).

[9] ‘au milieu des productions les plus informes, dans les monuments les moins importants et

les plus fragiles’.

[10] ‘au lieu de chercher a constater l’age d’une production de l’Art, par l’erudition qui en

explique le sujet, il faudrait au contraire en expliquer le sujet, par le style du monument et

d’apres les principes de l’Art’.

[11] In 1813, to be precise (see, for a condensed analysis, Kaufmann, 2004).

[12] As remarked Daniel Arrasse (1972), history of art was nevertheless dominated by an

evolutionist conception until Riegl (1972) imposed the historical point of view.

[13] ‘Le temps qui du battement de ses grandes ailes efface toute chose.’

[14] ‘La geographie a precede, subsiste et durera, alors que nos civilisations sont passageres.’

[15] ‘Ce que recherche l’architecture d’aujourd’hui et ce que beaucoup d’esprits ne comprennent

pas encore, est justement qu’elle tende a tenir compte du terrain, et qu’a la fois, elle dresse

fierement l’edifice abstrait, tel qu’il est ici [en Grece] realise.’

[16] Giedion mentions also the ‘bird’s eye view and the enormous magnification of the

microscope’, which ‘brought us a new perception of nature and its prodigies’ (in the French

version of his book: ‘Space, Time, Architecture’; Paris: Editions Denoel, 2004, p. 257).

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