XXXII 29th October 2004
The farmʼs economic standing has now achieved viability, because without counting the original investment, which came from abroad and was a kind of a loan, it is now fully self-supporting without fear of hard chances, except of course the dependence on weather, which can playfully or strictly decide even a British election. Not a hobby, but a hard working farm, which we plan to make the best in the Universe. Our first application for subsidies from CAP has been submitted and we were investigated in depth, or rather from on high, by satellite or helicopters, receiving questions concerning marginal waste spaces, ponds or our algebraic calculations. It is impressive in its seriousness and exactness, but we sympathise with a small farmer who has to furnish this information. However it is worthwhile as this year we shall receive subsidies in the region ? 125 a hectare, unless the government filches it, with additional for cover-crop next year. All will rise gradually to the West European level over a space of ten years. This is an increase which will become a new item in our budget, as will the VAT for which we registered and which is charged at 3 % and repaid at 22 % for any equipment and 5 % for our produce. It does not mean riches, but we have looked at Lamborghini tractors - and with sympathy at our dear, 17 year old Ursus C-360, stitched from two halves, each coming from a different village, after its frame broke - digging a flooded corner of Eve field. Some will soon have to give a thought to - what is it weʼll live by - when fear disappears with glorious Common Agricultural Policy?
Observing the aesthetic scene today, we see a period of flux and of relativism, with architecture reflecting these trends by what may be called a “look no hands architecture” (LNHA), of anything being possible, at a push of a button: all so easy. It is a kind of Rococo of the Renaissance in which the joy of discovery of new principles, as with Corbusier or in Bauhaus, reverts to an application of individual minimalist, post-modern and other styles, decorative or capturing with flair, but meaningless in the content of human art. The old grasp of essentials is lost and the over-elaboration of details is substituted for the few true strokes which gave so much expression to the early work. The architect or the artist has reached the sad state, when they fancy that a large number of careless forms equalled a few intelligent ones. This mixed-up hurrah of individualism, finding full expression in a blue stroke here, or a free curve there, has to be pulled back to the deep understanding of the meaning of form through reason, and warm knowledge of human condition through socialism and love. If the artists find it, then Architecture and Design will return to its rich function in the culture of society; if they donʼt, it will devalue into a ʻthrow awayʼ commercial bonanza. Each man has to search for it, himself.
In Idsanism we offer ʻdignity for manʼ as the main function generating form. It relates the same principles of respect for small or large elements, for important and minor events, in prominent or homely places, for the recipient as well as for the designer. It means that the palaces of an emporium or of a hotel are to be minimalist in detail with only simple earthy materials accentuated, while a family block in a city would be enriched with finest technology, lighting and art. Ministries or churches designed in simple geometric forms, while a health centre or employment exchange with subtle, Gaudesque or Aaltesque lines. Buildings on hills or in prominent places keeping horizontal, whilst those in the valley or on a comely site being vertical or arresting. Sociology of objects means that they must be seen within the concrete system of society that creates them and receives them; they must be seen as a language listened to, as it is being spoken. There are many and better ways than those listed to express the form by the spirit of Idsanism, but the importance lies in conscious awareness of it, as generator of design, from a factory to a girlie dress.
Such interaction happened before, and in the last hundred years it involved a struggle with established and outdat- ed forms of classicism, in order to bring rational space and organic form. In England after the war, a Hertford group, build- ing new schools for a new post-war generation, under leadership of Newsom and Aslin, was proud that its first designs for desks and chairs were too small because the children had grown too big, as a result of war rationing, with a better diet, than they had before. The same spirit was true in rebuilding of Coventry, where the peopleʼs concerns were the dictates of planning of the centre of the city, and where Council housing estates, built by Wimpeys were as grand as the Bath crescents. The disrepute that the communal housing acquired, is not due to the designs, which were often exemplary, but to lack of respect for humble citizens: by not equipping or enriching them properly - which placed them then and does now in the bottom drawer. Quite different and opposed to the approach at the same time in, for instance, Comasima of Milan, where in 1958 the city building similar estates for simple people from the south established each block with elegance and a concierge, with protection of entrances by entry phone, all in the Fifties - still often missing today half a century later in our country, even on best estates like Golden Lane in London.
The same spirit commanded the design in Ulm, the post-war Bauhaus, where the sense of change in Germany engendered here by sacrifice made by young Scholls, brother and sister, beheaded by Nazis - called for a sense of purpose in design. The Hochschule fur Gestaltung where I lectured was founded, in their memory, by their surviving sister, with a generous help of American money, who shared it fifty-fifty with German industry. The designs followed pre-war Bauhaus in simple forms, realised for instance in Braun object designs, who supported these initiatives and the social change giving them a physical expression. It is that kind of inspiration Idsanism hopes to inspire in the artist, not fulfilled or generated by narrow commercialism or purely formalistic expressions. But in the spirit of Idealism Sansfrontieres which can reconcile peopleʼs need for meaning with practicality.
The architect has always thought big, whether in Acro- polis or on the Forum, with Gothic cathedral, or Renaissance and Modern movement. There are structures today which still express deep conviction, such as - one of the finest - Fosterʼs Viaduct de Millau, showing that the capacity is there. Think big and dream, one may ask, Russian friends in the limitless expands of Siberia, to conceive new forms like a two kilometre Buckminster Fuller dome housing a whole town, or a Street built vertically into the sky, both searching for answers to natureʼs most extreme disciplines.
Or to construct a Motorway with TGV by the side, running 5000 kilometres on 20o East longitude - North to South, from Benghazi to Cape Town, with 17 roundabouts and neighbourhoods, each leading left and right to every country in Africa, to open up this Continent and let it inhale modern life. To rebuild New Orleans, or Dacca, or to construct a bridge or tunnel over the Straits of Gibraltar, or to build a house for himself and every man. Looking at the faces of men attending the Doric dinner at the RIBA, reserved for the decrepit ancients, one sees the sense of power and satisfaction of achievement of a life of action and one knows that men like that are out there everywhere in the world, both young and old waiting to be given the opportunity. They should do more than that and confidently grab it out of the vacillating hands of politicians. There is beauty and therefore confident power in the fine profession of Architecture and in all arts.
What is unbearable by contrast is to see cathedrals or museums pulverised, rivers poisoned, forests destroyed with cluster bombs, ancient sites of Garden of Eden despoiled, whether in Baghdad, Bethlehem or Falluja, under the aegis of decay of morality, naming its ʻshock and aweʼ freedom and democracy. Every architect has the responsibility to guide his design away from this Blasphemy.
