JA – We would like to raise a question that architects often consider an “uncomfortable” one: beauty and the beautiful.
Nuno Brandão Costa – It’s not uncomfortable for me at all because I consider architecture to be an art. And art, at its purest, is always a quest for beauty. What we do, in the final analysis, beyond the functional and technical aspects, and regardless of whether it comes at the beginning or at the end, i.e. when beginning to conceive a design or when finishing the work, what we are searching for is beauty. That’s the way I see it. I don’t feel at all uncomfortable because I think that architecture – and so far no one has said anything to the contrary – is the art of the space and construction or whatever you want to call it; but it is still an art and the idea of beauty always comes into this “artistic” side.
If we were interviewing Pancho Guedes we imagine his reply would probably be identical. However, it would seem that each one arrives at beauty through his own processes…
I may do things in a certain way, which I might not even be able to “explain”, and someone else might do things another way, and Pancho Guedes another way again, because there is a “structural base” that is the personality. Each of us has his training, his own culture, own education; does things his own way. But that does not mean I cannot look at things that have nothing in common with what I do and still find them beautiful. We would become very limited intellectually if we could only find beauty in things that have a certain empathy with what we ourselves do. Which is why I find beauty in a lot of things Pancho Guedes has done;including in the discourse he uses to explain things. There is an emotional load there that isorganic or expressionist, just like his work. While I have never adopted that discourse, I can acknowledge the beauty in it.
If we were to try to find a concept, some kind of explanation as to what beauty might be from the contemporary viewpoint, where could we find that concept?
I’m not sure to what degree that is possible; it may even have a “limiting” effect. But in architecture the concept of beauty always derives from what has gone before. One just can’t say: “This is what is beautiful now.” All the more so because works regurgitate; one looks at a work and, almost by inbuilt defect of education, an error of education, one immediately tries to draw a parallel to other works one knows or to history. Take the Paula Rego Museum [Eduardo Souto de Moura, Cascais, 2009]. Everyone says: “I have no idea where those chimneys come from.” It’s a bit difficult defining a concept of beauty to one period, to one specific moment. Of course, I’m not saying that the concept of beauty does not evolve; what I think is that, up until the 20th century (or including Modernism), there were styles and beauty was linked to styles…
To the “correct way” of developing a certain model?
They were styles. The last style we know of was perhaps the International Style or, a certain Post-modern style that may have existed but was not very successful time wise. Even Modernism is, in a way, not very different from Neo-classicism because there are compositional principles… take for example, the Portuguese architects, Viana de Lima, Arménio Losa or, in Lisbon, Ruy Athouguia: one can identify compositional principles. It is something very classical, very beaux arts, isn’t it? And these compositional principles have to do with balance, and all those notions have to do with beauty. These terms – balance, harmony, composition – have to do with beauty.
Today it would seem that there is no style, or that, at least, it is more fragmented. The reference framework for architects is very diverse and also very fragmented in generational terms. It is more difficult to identify “styles”; one can identify languages, which is something different.
In architecture has style been replaced by artistic personalities?
Yes, by languages.
And what’s the difference between style and language?
The style is basically a compositional rule, associated with some notion or concept of beauty. Of course, Modernism is a style that is also associated with concepts of functionality… And with a new urban interpretation of city making; it is more complex.
And associated with new materials, the possibilities of concrete…
… and technology.
Today the question is not so much one of style; in a sense, the situation is a more artistic, more idiosyncratic one. Language is more connected to this idea of expression and there are architects with very different languages. One sees a lot of this, in diverse forms. One sees it a little in that architecture that comes from the Netherlands, through Rem Koolhaas, and which Jacques Herzog later revisits.
I call it Neo-brutalism because there is tectonic expression of the things, the buildings, taken from an organic expression or from an expression of nature. Then there is a much more abstract line. For example, everyone says about the Casa da Música that it’s a meteorite, a stone, an element taken from a natural form. This Brutalism uses more organic forms. But even Peter Zumthor, who would appear to be an abstract architect, also does things that can be related to this immediate interpretation based on natural elements.
What kind of Neo-brutalism is for you the counterpart to this more abstract Neo-brutalism?
An organic Neo-brutalism. Because British Brutalism is abstract, it has its origins in a more abstract line that comes directly from Modernism, in which buildings are completely abstract, geometric pieces…
Later, in the 1980s, came what we called Minimalism, that whole thing of placing completely abstract pieces in nature, superimposed; there is a landscape and on it you place a geometrically artificial element.
If you were to ask me what line I identify more with, from the work method perspective, I would say the second line. That doesn’t mean that when I look at other buildings and, no matter how “horrendous” I find them, cannot find many aesthetic qualities and beauty in them. But there are other things; there are still vestiges of the Hi-tech out there, and one can still see all these languages being crossed in one single building. We have all seen buildings with an “organic” feel to them suspended on metal trellis work. That makes it difficult to identify a style now; because a style is something orthodox, i.e. it has a language, principles of composition. In the International Style they weren’t putting glass boxes on top of a cliff but that is possible today…
Within this plurality of languages where do we place Álvaro Siza, for example?
Siza is before all this. In other words, Siza is like Frank Gehry – he has his very own language; he doesn’t have a reference framework. His references are his study of architecture and his own way of working the discipline. He is one of the reference makers; I can’t put him in a category.
So there are architects that create references (let’s call it that) and other who follow and explore those references… is that it?
That’s the process and the same goes for art and even literature… Except that now, it is no longer a paradigm because it’s not static. Often the object (building) itself is something that serves to be reproduced and reinterpreted by others… Zaha Hadid went a long time without building anything but she created a language. We don’t have canons anymore.
So where is beauty today?
In the design project or in the work the quest for beauty has to do with the idea ofperfection.
Perfection in what aspect? Of execution?
Perfection of execution; but also the object having ideal proportions, balance, an ideal relationship with its surroundings, the landscape, the space… It’s all of that, and it’s very difficult to put in words. It is a sum of many things. Deep down, the question is almost astructuring process. The idea is always this: constructing an object that has to do with the idea of beauty, above all, of balance of the form, of the composition.
As a teacher, is beauty a concept that you teach?
It is in the sense that I use the words ugly and beautiful without any problem. In the final analysis, what I try to transmit to the students –
together with questions of technique and functionality – is that everything has to be worked towards creating an object, a project, a building, that has a balance. And that balance has to do with form, proportion, space; the harmonious sum of these things is what I consider to bebeauty in architecture.
But my beautiful and my ugly will always be mine alone. Teaching design1 is trying to get into the head of the student; that’s a little pretentious but I think a little bit of the exercise is precisely that.
Is style something that is taught?
The Porto School is not a style school. There are situations, abroad for example, and I don’t mean this as criticism, where they have a “style school”. Zumthor’s students [for example, tend to design] “thermal baths”. Students of mine have gone to Mendrisio [Accademia di Architettura di Mendrisio] and have described these “style” processes, all very scholastic. The Porto School has nothing of this today. There may be a certain “tendency” in the language (when I speak of language, I mean the elevations, the final image, etc.). But from the point of view of the proposal of the form and spatial logic, I don’t think one can speak of a school. I’m probably not the ideal person to be talking about this; I’ve been there a long time and I’m biased.
Going back to the previous topics: how does one achieve balance?
It’s easier to explain if put in a different way: the instrument I have, that facilitates that quest for me, is the drawing; it is a re-drawing process: drawing on the drawing… The drawing and models.
We can’t objectify the question of beauty, is that it?
I think you can objectify it by looking at the works. Each of us will apply our own notion of beauty to them; some will say: “I think that’s pretty”; others will say: “it’s horrible”.
There are buildings about which one can achieve consensus; we’re not necessarily talking about architecture produced today…
That’s where another very important factor – time – comes in. With the passage of time things take on a beauty they didn’t have before and that’s when they begin to gain consensus. When the Villa Savoye [Poissy, 1929] was built I’m sure there were a lot of people who didn’t find it beautiful. Today, the number of people, regardless of whether they are architects or not, who see it as a beautiful object is much greater.
What happened?
We are talking about works that make a certain break with things, a rupture in the common notion of what people find beautiful. And architecture always has the tendency towards making that break. All of us architects have an inbuilt professional defect to attempt thatbreak – I’m not really sure it’s a defect, but it might well be – and that “break” doesn’t sit well with the immediate gaze and the concepts people have at a certain moment in time. So “history” and the passage of time have a “tranquilising” effect.
To give you an example: I chose the Centre Pompidou [Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers, Paris, 1977] – which I think is a fantastic building – as the theme for a class. And a colleague of mine, Carlos Prata, who is from the generation before me, said: “When they built that I thought it was horrible; it went against all my principles, but now I think it’s fantastic.” Basically, in a way that is the idea: for people of my generation, the Centre Pompidou has been a “fantastic building” from the beginning…
It is true that both the Centre Pompidou and the Villa Savoye “break” with the previous history…
And introduce a new aesthetic concept.
But they’re not buildings that the common perception immediately took to. Does this consensus we have been talking about have to be built through on-going discourses – rationalisations – until the public begins to be won over, i.e. begins to “see” the beauty?
These rationalisations make them better in the eyes of others.
So the idea of beauty is not a construct?
As far as both art and architecture are concerned, we are speaking of artificial and abstract things. Everything is constructed and everything has reference frameworks. The reference frameworks come from behind, from the side, from the front, from nature, from geometry, from wherever. But all of this is social; it’s almost like the human species with its tendency to create artificial rules to manage its own nature.
What are your “conscious” references?
They are design projects I remember – projects, works or places – and the drawing, with its more uncontrolled physical side.
Working via the drawing or with models generates different designs?
Different languages, yes. There is no better or worse, there’s no point in debating that. But the idea of the drawing has a physical side that is more difficult to explain. It also has a very strong rational side: it’s not the hand alone doing the drawing.
In popular culture we have situations we can take to and comprehend as beautiful. This popular culture does not require any reflection, models, drawings, adjustments based on history… it is done with a natural ease…
I don’t really agree with that… If we take the example of the Inquérito [Survey of Portuguese Popular Architecture], all that, while empirical, has a tradition and therefore the history is there, the forms, the building methods, etc.; if we make the analogy to the work of the architect, it’s the same. It also has an extremely functionalist side…
One can say that it requires know-how, and beauty has to do precisely with that functionalist, structure and constructive primarism. That primarism is an idea of purity, balance and harmony that has very much to do with beauty.
Does everything you mentioned – functionalism, clarity of construc-tion – not prove that beauty is indeed completely rationalised, even in vernacular architecture? Or is it that beauty is not so much learnt by the persons who produce it but by the persons who analyse it?
I wouldn’t say it’s innate; it becomes innate. We see those houses, in the villages, like a “block of stone” with a door and a window and we think it is marvellous; it looks like an intentional composition. The person who built it used a building process he was familiar with, but I believe he was not indifferent to the beauty of the whole. In other words, that man, when he was composing the window, definitely thought of things like: “This window is ugly like this, let’s make it a little bit taller and let’s make this here symmetric”… These people, no matter how “illiterate” they may have been, did not totally neglect beauty.
Beauty is one thing, the commitment people put into things is another. In these stone houses, the commitment was total even if the result was not very inventive, always the same. But the people who make them commit to them body and soul. Does that not come into reading beauty? Can this commitment, this involvement, this emotional side not be “celebrated” when we are judging the beauty of things?
Yes, there is an emotional side to design because it is an artistic act and you can see that in architectural works. Architects all have their ups and downs, some works that are better than others, and there is always that one work where you can see the extra motivation; or a moment of greater creativity and, accordingly, greater encounter with beauty or with theirnotion of what is beautiful. If we lose that, there is no architecture anymore and we will all be doing the same “façades”; it would be the annulment of the discipline itself.
If a building is associated with an ideologically objectionable regime does that prevent us from seeing its beauty potential?
When I look at those courthouses with those 20-metre-high columns, I identify that with a bad regime and an inhuman scale and that prevents me from finding those buildings beautiful.
What relationship do you have with the historicist architecture of the 19th century? Do you think the Modern Movement shaped your idea of beauty?
No. All those things by [Karl Friedrich] Schinkel, that is Neo-classicism at its best.
Schinkel is Mies van der Rohe’s hero; you can’t pick him. We want other examples.
The Hotel Infante de Sagres by Rogério de Azevedo. Rogério de Azevedo has that fantastic thing near Avenida dos Aliados, the Comércio do Porto building [1931], an almost Neo-classic building with pediments and towers. Then he has the garage [of the Comércio do Porto building, 1928-1932], behind it, which followed slightly later and is more Modernist and then further up there is the Hotel Infante de Sagres [1950s]. I find that building very interesting: the composition of the façade is almost super “minimalist”, but then inside, those rooms, that Victorian feeling, very comfortable… It’s interesting, beautiful.
You’re not confusing the idea of beauty with that of comfort?
The idea of beauty has to do with comfort. They’re difficult to separate.
All architects like more abstract architecture superimposed on the more organic nature – at least I do and it is what I work towards. But in contradiction to that, I also like certain Victorian ambiences. Maybe it has something to do with Porto itself and my own experiences, my parents’ and grandparents’ houses, and a certain comfort I re-encounter in the aesthetic of the Infante de Sagres, a certain weight and a certain form. That is probably a contradiction. Then again, maybe it’s not. I went to see that fabulous building by Le Corbusier in Geneva, the Immeuble Clarté [1930-1932]. When it was built it was the most radical thing there was. I was able to visit the apartment of a lady (who even was a niece of his) and its decoration was a mixture of the Victorian and original Le Corbusier things… It was the proof that those two worlds are not incompatible.
Oscar Niemeyer argues that architecture only improves people’s lives when it emerges as beautiful. Does that make any sense?
I think, in the final analysis, that is it in a nutshell. Niemeyer’s idea is fantastic. For me that is practically the definition of our profess-ion. What the architect adds in relation to all the rest is a “notion of beauty”. Anybody could design a house, but only architects bring this idea into it, or are able to bring it in. But the statement is “dangerous”, for if it were interpreted in the strict sense it could become a banality without a sense to it; but we know what we are talking about…
The danger in what Niemeyer said would be that it supports – to a certain extent – the idea of architects as makers of icons, regulating in importance the great banner of post-war architecture: the social dimension of architecture.
A major component in that social dimension is the aesthetic component.
Let’s take a social housing neighbourhood: a few boxes above a courtyard is one thing, but “functionality” designed by an architect who has a certain aesthetic notion of such an element within the city is something different. In other words, that social component is absolute.
Does everything have to be in that field of the “almost sublime” or is there another field, a less heroic one, in which architects can “correct”, do things as well and as beautifully as possible, modest things that are needed?
Of course, but that description in itself, is that not about beauty? This is what I am saying: “making things better”; “make things nicer”, does that not involve an idea of aesthetics, of beauty? Of things turning out well? If we abandon that, architecture is over. When the quest is solely and exclusively for aesthetics – and we see this sometimes –
the works are generally a disaster. They are what we call formalist works that have no content and, curiously enough, end up being ugly. Let me say it in a very banal way: formalism is “form for form’s sake”. It has very much to do with the image only; the imageis something for which I have little sensibility. With this I just want to say that beauty is indeed fundamental but in the creative process it cannot be the only option, nor is it an end in itself.
Does a lack of balance or canonical proportion mean something is ugly? We are thinking of architects such as Robert Venturi, to name one example…
What Venturi does is not ugly; the idea is provocation, which is different. It’s a bit like James Stirling; they are two seminal architects. They have influenced millions of people. They both follow a very strong line of artistic investigation. And it’s obvious that it involves walking a “tightrope”; there may be a few “wobbles”, but I don’t think it’s ugly.
Is there a popular consensus as far as beauty is concerned?
No, I don’t think so. We don’t even have peer consensus.
But there are great works that achieve consensus; for example, Álvaro Siza’s Tea Rooms.
Time has a lot of influence. It all has to do with memory, with history, and buildings gradually gain consensus. It’s the construction of a collective imaginary. Things are difficult to take to immediately. But it also has to do with an anthropomorphic aspect: people identify built objects with their own body. The idea of beauty of the form in architecture has always been in constant relationship with the body. When he was our professor, Alberto Carneiro would say: “The design is the body in the space.” This idea that everything we look at, where there is an aesthetic enjoyment, implies a very physical relationship… that could be the explanation… that there is a comfortable relationship with our body. |
1. Nuno Brandão Costa lectures design at the University of Porto’s School of Architecture [FA/UP].