The End Of Architecture History And The Last Tyrant I

-John Dennison-'The View of Le Corbusier'. The Final Form of architecture is one that use advance technology to achieve abstract representation, different from the utalitarian struggle of the vernacular.

It has been a shifting journey of architecture discovery since the first time I found architecture. From the first self-locating and defining, to now, reasoning its future 'Great End', architecture for me is a directional and finite journey, with now I can see the threshold of its ending, somehow faintly outlined .

American scholar Francis Fukuyama in the 90's wrote 'The End Of History', examining the possibility of the great end of political history, being finalized by the last concept of Liberal Democracy. Liberal Democracy is both definitive and directional, a Final Form of human pursuit of political and ideological development, thus the end of history, where history is seen as a compilation of individual events of human fight, of struggles and of the efforts done for improvement to achieve the democratic concept of society like today. Architecture in some extend share the analogy and as the hemogenous counterpart of this idea of 'Great Ending'. Modern architecture as the Final Form, perfect, free from the gravely internal contradiction found in those primitive vernaculars. It is the end chapter of architecture history, where we have to change how we see history, which we previously understood as a coherent and evolutionary process, to which I think is to see it as finite and directional, pointing to the great Perfect Form - The Great End.

Modern time architecture history label past architecture as terms
like 'primitive', 'vernacular' and 'regional' (by Frampton). This is part of the hegemony of the modern technological perfection when the Modern and the past were set in comparison. But why architecture history ends here?
-Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831). German 19th century philosopher.

It would be rather a very interesting explanation if we examine it through the philosophical ideas from some greats like Friedrich Hegel and Plato. Past architecture of the primitives, locals and vernacular are those existed with enormous irrationalities and contradictions, plus with internal incapability of fulfilling human's deepest psychological 'longings'. The term 'longings' I better explaining it through the concept derived from both ideas of Plato and Hegel.

While past architecture before the emergence of the Moderns have failed in the task of fulfilling our human's 'longings', the technological oriented Modern architecture, brought about by the march of universal post-industrial capitalism of global market, is seen as the 'Mission Achieved' of our centuries of architectural quest. So now, why the past has failed and the Modern is the Final Form?


-'The Republic'(380 BCE) by Plato. Of early democratic Athens before the birth of Liberal Democracy. Of early classical architecture before the birth of Modern architecture. The two analogies.

Hegel speak through the natural science of human when explaining the events occurred in the political history. The concept is that there are 3 Objectives of every human's life. Every human seek eagerly in their life in the pursuit of these 3 big Objectives, indifference of racial, sexual, ideological and social arbitrary distinction, you and me, everyone is included. Above from our natural needs like food, shelter and physical preservation, plus the second, our efforts and calculation to acquire them, the third Objective of a human's life is the seek for 'RECOGNITION'. In particular, we wants to be recognized as a human being, with worth and dignity, with pride for instance of architecture. This struggle for recognition sipped through every part of human's life, including the seek for architectural pride for a particular group of community. This idea which is derived from Hegel's concept is perpetual with the one founded by Plato. In his world-changing publication - The Republic, he once said that there were 3 main part of every human's soul, first is desire, second is the reasoning (or calculations) to achieve this desire and the third part is called the 'thymos', the recognition of their self worth. Every human's act (even the tiniest act) is linked direct or indirectly to the fulfillment of this RECOGNITION of self worth. The main obstacle in his pursuit of this dignity of architecture that can be part of his longings is unfortunately the our past limited technological knowhow. Those years and centuries of struggles yielded pages and pages of architectural evolution but which not yet found the required 'RECOGNIZED' and 'REPRESENTABLE' quality that human would naturally prey for. Those are the primordial combats and struggle to achieve the third Objective of RECOGNITION. Modern free market and technological advance are the solution to their struggle. For it provide the right and the mean for them to fully express their will to achieve architectural RECOGNITION. The architecture technology now is no longer confined to the use of the noble civilizations, free global market plus consumerism make it everywhere visible and common. The Struggle stopped. RECOGNITION achieved.

Modern architecture supersede local vernacular architecture in our time as a result of the realization that the former (our own culture) provides defective form of recognition. The vernacular architecture that try to recognized the identity demands of its particular ethnic and cultural group are less rational than the universal form of RECOGNITION existed in embracing the technological based Modern architecture. Psycologically, this embrace would automatically set a particular group of human to the global RECOGNITION as an advanced and civilized community. The infinite technological capabilities of Modern architecture make the cultural identity 'forging' never be this easy before, human can now forge out an identity of pride and for manifestation in just seconds. Thus the third OBJECTIVE of a human living a life is finally achieved. Events of struggles and architectural revolution are now ceased to happen in the future resulting in the end of architecture history.
-Malaysian Pavilion of the Shanghai World Expo. The forged identity with the 'right' and 'means' of applying modern architecture technology.

- Plato’s allegory of the cave, The Republic book VII. 'We talk about augmented reality as if there is a stable thing called reality that we can add things to that are not real, but virtual. Obviously reality is a mental construct. When virtuality becomes convincing enough it will not be distinguishable from reality'.

The culture formed by this homogenous global Modern architecture is human that is lacking in thymos. His struggle for RECOGNITION is now solved. What left in his life are the OBJECTIVES of natural desire and the reasoning (calculation) to get it. He is a man without chest, with no extra desire to be greater than other because he has achieve his longing RECOGNITION as an civilized human being, and thus we call him...THE LAST TYRANT!