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Modernism is a critical stance toward history as dogma.
We see architecture as the process of working out specific site and program requirements in the medium of "buildings." Each architecture project is unique, because its site and program are unique. Of course, many building projects are not unique: the construction of cape-style three-bedroom residences come to mind. The cape may have once been a unique solution to a site and program challenge, it no longer is. Capes no longer require architects. In fact, they require very little thinking, except for someone to say, "We need a cape."
Now, the cape has changed technologically over time. The cape of 200 years ago did not have indoor plumbing or electricity. One suspects most do now. They may even have alumimum-clad windows. The form of the cape continues to be popular, and that shows a temporal continuity to an idea about building massing and room layout. Each new cape that gets built looks familiar: it looks like all the other capes that have been built for hundreds of years, and that is how it justifies its formal qualities. It responds to the site by looking like other responses to sites in the region.
But architecture is a process. It is the process of thinking through the site and program for a building, and then finding an idea that resolves the site with the program. The architecture of a building is the thought behind a building. It is the idea that gives sense to a building.
Buildings have always had ideas. One has the archetypal examples of religious buildings, whose idea is glory to God, or banks, whose idea is security and wealth. These types of buildings have been around for thousands of years, and gave rise to "building types." One could study these types formally, as in their massing, decoration, and even color. The longevity of these building types lent to the development of architectural traditions. Each building could be successful by taking part in the visual tradition of its type. Banks that look like banks are successful because visually they appear to be banks. When one looks at a traditional bank, one sees "bank." In the same way, one sees "dwelling" when one looks at a cape. A traditional building is successful not so much in the way it resolves specific or unique site and program requirements, but because it invokes historical visual cues.
In architecture, early Modernism was a response to new types of human activity that required buildings for which no historical precedent existed. Take, for instance, the National Library in Paris by Labrouste, or the Crystal Palace by Paxton. These seminal examples of early Modernism were realized not so much because people wanted to be different (although often they did), but because they set out to build structures for which no historical precedent existed. These new structures were needed in part because of new human activities during the industrial revolution, and they were realized because that same Industrial Revolution offered technical ways to achieve their program goals in original fashion. One could possibly say that the general program for modern architecture has been "a clean, well-lighted place for human activity, not limited by the formal constraints of historical precedent."
This may seem banal, but think about the cape. Historically, the cape had no plumbing, no electricity, no insulation, and very small windows in very small rooms. Contemporary cape dwellers are interested in modern conveniences like plumbing and electricity, and maybe even DSL lines, and they have also unwittingly moved toward larger-than-traditional windows. There is also a tendency to build fewer internal walls than the historical cape had, thereby opening up the interior space. Where cape builders generally stop evolving the cape is in the iconic exterior massing. That item is sacred.
Were cape builders willing to let go of the iconic exterior massing and fenestration, they would end up "exploding" the cape into something else, without historical precedent. In other words, the cape would evolve into something more modern.
The ideas that interest Sealander Studio are modern. We design clean, well-lighted places for human activity, whether on the scale of the guest cottage or university library. For us, beauty is the quality buildings have when their formal attributes work in concert to answer the questions of site and program. The formal attributes are space, light and structure. (One could, seriously, include building envelope under "structure," thermal comfort and energy efficiency under "light", and environmental controls for ventilation and humidity under "space.") As architects, we resolve progam issues for a specific spatial and temporal site in the medium of the overriding modern ideas about buildings: Space, light, structure.
The site includes not only parameters such as solar access, drainage, existing flora and the disposition of neighboring buildings, but also the historical context of those buildings. However, historical context should not drive design. In other words, history should not be treated as dogma. This is partly because, historically, buildings get better over time, and to be historical means to accept a particular precedent as an arbiter of success in resolving a particular type of program.
Modern architecture is guilty of having a "look," but no more than traditional architecture has a "look." And, in full disclosure, the architecture of Sealander Studio has a look, which can be called our style of architecture. We like to believe, however, that the thread running through all our work is the original creation of space, light and structure to answer specific site and program requirements, within the general category of "clean, well lighted space for human activity."
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