Modernity and modernities. Challenges for
the historiography of modern architecture
Hilde Heynen
1. The concept of modernity
In my book ‘Architecture and Modernity. A Critique’ I related the history of the Modern Movement in
architecture to the conceptualization of modernity by authors such as Marshall Berman, Jürgen
Habermas and Jean Baudrillard. According to these authors, modernity is what gives the present the
specific quality that makes it different from the past, and which points the way towards the future.
Modernity is often described as a break with tradition, and as typifying everything that stands for the
new, the innovative and the daring.
Since the 18th century, the century of the Enlightenment in Europe, modernity was seen as bound up
with critical reason – the idea that there is no ulterior authority, that men’s capacity to critically
question everything takes precedence over any form of Revelation. Modernity hence is constantly in
conflict with tradition and it embraces the struggle for change. In the 19th century modernization
gained ground in the economic and political fields. With industrialization, political upheavals and
increasing urbanization modernity became far more than just an intellectual concept. In the urban
environment, in changing living conditions and in everyday reality, the break with the established values
and certainties of the tradition could be both seen and felt. The modern became visible on very many
different levels. In this respect Marshall Berman insists that a distinction should be drawn between
modernization (the socio-economic process), modernity (the condition of life) and modernism (the body
of tendencies and movements that embrace modernity).i
Modernity hence mediates between a process of socio-economic development known as modernization
and subjective responses to it in the form of modernist discourses and movements. One can further
draw a distinction between different concepts of modernity – programmatic and transitory. The
advocates of a programmatic concept interpret modernity as being first and foremost a project, a
project of progress and emancipation. They emphasize the liberating potential that is inherent in
modernity. A programmatic concept views modernity primarily from the perspective of the new, of that
which distinguishes the present age from the one that preceded it. A typical advocate of this concept is
Jürgen Habermas. He formulates what he calls the `incomplete project' of modernity as follows:
"The project of modernity formulated in the 18th century by the philosophers of the
Enlightenment consisted in their efforts to develop objective science, universal morality and law,
and autonomous art according to their inner logic. At the same time, this project intended to
release the objective potentials of each of these domains from their esoteric forms. The
Enlightenment philosophers wanted to utilize this accumulation of specialized culture for the
enrichment of everyday life - that is to say, for the rational organization of everyday social life."ii
In this programmatic approach two elements can be distinguished. On the one hand, according to
Habermas - with specific reference to Max Weber - modernity is characterized by an irreversible
emergence of autonomy in the fields of science, art and morality, which must then be developed
`according to their inner logic'. On the other hand, however, modernity is also seen as a project: the final
goal of the development of these various autonomous domains lies in their relevance for practice, their
potential use `for the rational organization of everyday social life'. In Habermas' view great emphasis is
placed on the idea of the present giving form to the future, i.e. on the programmatic side of modernity.
In contrast to this programmatic concept the transitory view stresses rather the transient or
momentary. According to Jean Baudrillard, the programmatic is gradually giving way for the transitory,
in which modernity is no longer a project but rather a fashion:
“Modernity provokes on all levels an aesthetics of rupture, of individual creativity and of
innovation which is everywhere marked by the sociological phenomenon of the avant-garde (...)
and by the increasingly more outspoken destruction of traditional forms (...) Modernity is
radicalized into momentaneous change, into a continuous traveling and thus its meaning is
changing. It gradually loses each substantial value, each ethical and philosophical ideology of
progress which sustained it at the outset and it is becoming an aesthetics of change for the sake of
change (...) In the end, modernity purely and simply coincides with fashion, which at the same
time means the end of modernity.”iii
Modernity, according to Baudrillard, establishes change and crisis as values, but these values
increasingly lose their immediate relation with any progressive perspective. The result of this loss is that
modernity begins to run away with itself and sets the scene for its own downfall. Thinking the transitory
concept of modernity through to its conclusions can lead to the proclamation of the end of modernity
and, taking it one step further, to the postulation of a post-modern condition. Generally, one can state,
at least as far as the architectural discourse is concerned, that modernism in architecture is mostly
based on a programmatic understanding of modernity, whereas postmodernism rather embraces a
transitory concept of the same.
For Marshall Berman it is precisely the relationship between all these divergent aspects that makes
modernity so fascinating. For the individual the experience of modernity is characterized by a
combination of programmatic and transitory elements, by an oscillation between the struggle for
personal development and the nostalgia for what is irretrievably lost:
"To be modern is to find ourselves in an environment that promises us adventure, power, joy,
growth, transformation of ourselves and the world - and at the same time, that threatens to
destroy everything we have, everything we know, everything we are."iv
The character of modernity is indeed ambivalent and contradictory. Modernity provokes changes on all
levels, and destroys traditional forms, destroys the world as we knew it. That means that for most
everyone involved with modernity, there is on the one hand joy in the change, in the process of
improvement, but on the other hand, at the same time, regret because many things of the past have
been destroyed.
2. Multiple modernities
Whereas Berman and the other authors discussed thus far treated modernity as a singular
phenomenon, since the 1980s the idea has emerged that modernity can take on different forms and
that it is not the same everywhere. As Duangfang Lu states, in a recent contribution to ‘The Sage
Handbook of Architectural Theory’:
“To think the modern is to think the present, which is necessarily caught in the ever-shifting social,
political, and cultural cross-currents. For many decades, modernization was depicted in social
sciences as a broad series of processes of industrialization, rationalization, urbanization, and other
social changes through which modern societies arose. The concept has been heavily criticized for its
Eurocentric assumptions in recent years. It assumes, for example, that only Western society is truly
modern and that all societies are heading for the same destination. With the epistemological break
triangulated by the poststructuralist, postmodern, and postcolonial theory, the dominance of this
biased progressive historicism and its associated binaries (modern/traditional, self/other,
center/periphery, etc.) are challenged. The questions about modernity, understood as modes of
experiencing and questioning the present, are re-thought.”v
The understanding that modernity might have different manifestations was already evoked by Shmuel
N. Eisenstadt, in arguing that Eastern Europe under communism went through its own form of
modernization, and was thus facing other challenges. According to him the breakdown of communist
regimes in 1989 had to do with the contradictions within their implementation of modernity. These
contradictions were rooted in the nature of the vision that combined the basic premises of modernity,
together with far-reaching strong totalitarian orientations and policies. He thus spoke about multiple
modernities, stating that
“The actual developments in modernizing societies have refuted the homogenizing and hegemonic
assumptions of this Western program of modernity.”vi
Also postcolonial theorists argue that the Western / European model of modernity was in fact just one
among many – not the leading beacon that other countries were following, but rather a specific
historical configurations of forces that led to a specific outcome, whereas in other parts of the world
other configurations necessarily led to other outcomes – no less modern, but modern in another
fashion. Dipesh Chakrabarty coined the phrase ‘Provincializing Europe’ – the title of one of his books – to
point to the fact that the history of European social relations is not necessary a model that is being
emulated everywhere else.vii Hence it doesn’t make a lot of sense to see e.g. Karl Marx as an authority
for eternity, because he happened to understand the logics of 19th century political economy in Europe.
For sure, he claims, Marx remains a major philosopher and economist, one can still be inspired by his
worldview and his work, but it would be wrong to think that ‘Das Kapital’ offers a key for interpreting
each and every crisis wherever in the world. ‘Provincializing Europe’ mainly addresses his fellow Indian
intellectuals, arguing that they should try much harder to understand the historical specificities and the
path dependency of India’s subaltern classes. A Marxist or neo-marxist framework of interpretation can
be helpful to that end, but certainly doesn’t offer the last word of wisdom to deal with these specific
challenges. Marx, he argued, needs to be brought back to his real stature, which is that of an interesting
intellectual whose analysis certainly carried a lot of weight when applied to 19th century Europe, but
whose legacy should not be seen as the sole route to truth in understanding different trajectories of
modernization in different parts of the world.
Jyoty Hosagrahar, a postcolonial historian of architecture, applies these thought in her book on Delhi,
which she appropriately called ‘Indigenous Modernities. Negotiating Architecture, Urbanism and
Colonialism’. Her argument is that the Indian residents in Delhi formed their own form of modern
dwelling, in taking some things from the colonizers while refuting others. Hence there is a modern Delhi
that is not colonial Delhi, but that is not ‘traditional’ either. Hosagrahar also contributed to ‘The Sage
Handbook of Architectural Theory’, where she wrote the chapter on postcolonial perspectives.
According to her postcolonial perspectives have relocated discussions of modernity to ‘other’ locales
and reframed modernist conversations about inclusion and exclusion. They emphasize global
interconnections, and the interplay of culture and power in imagining, producing, and experiencing the
built environment. She emphasizes a broad definition of postcolonialism, which includes perspectives
that give voice to struggles against all types of colonialisms, and enable and empower alternative
narratives and forms.viii
3. Architecture and identity
If the historiography of modernism in architecture has seen quite some additions the last couple of
decades, one of the more important revisions has indeed to do with postcolonial critique. This critique
starts from the assumption that modernism and colonialism are in some ways intertwined – that they
cannot be seen as intellectual discourses that are totally separate. For one thing, this has to do with an
economic context. Take for example the Van Nelle factory, one of the famous icons of modernism. This
was, in fact, a coffee, tea and tobacco factory - which means that this icon of modernity got into the
world as a result of colonial expansion, colonial policy and colonial production. It cannot be denied
therefore that the Van Nelle factory was part and parcel of the whole colonial condition.
In the book ‘Back from Utopia’, which was edited by Hubert-Jan Henket and myself (2002), we tried to
come to terms not only with the physical heritage of the Modern Movement, but also with its
ideological heritage. In my own contribution I raised some issues, some questions of colonialism, which I
summarized as follows:
“In postcolonial theories the interconnections between the Enlightment project of modernity
and the imperialist practice of colonialism have been carefully disentangled. Following the lead
of Edward Said’s Orientalism, it is argued that colonial discourse was intrinsic to European selfunderstanding: it is through their conquest and their knowledge of foreign peoples and
territories (two experiences which usually were intimately linked), that Europeans could position
themselves as modern, as civilized, as superior, as developed and progressive vis-à-vis local
populations that were none of that (…) The other, the non-European, was thus represented as
the negation of everything that Europe imagined or desired to be.”ix
This is, in a nutshell, the argument that Edward Said developed in his seminal book Orientalism (1978).
Edward Said (1935-2003) was a Palestinian intellectual, born in Jerusalem, who became a scholar
teaching at Columbia University, in New York, in the field of comparative literature. The central theme in
his work is the relation between cultures. His book Orientalism starts from the assumption that the
Orient is not an inert fact of nature: what we call the Orient is in the East because our point of reference
is Europe. Men make their own history, he claims, they also make maps and these maps then structure
our conception of reality:
“Therefore as much as the West itself, the Orient is an idea that has a history and a tradition of
thought, imagery and vocabulary that have given it reality and presence in, and for, the West.
The two geographical entities thus support and to an extent reflect each other.”x (Said 1978, 5)
In art, the term orientalism refers to a whole series of images which form a certain tradition that depicts
the fantasies of Western painters about the East. Famous topics are women in the harem, women
making toilets, women leading a life of luxury and laziness – or men, brave men confronting the desert
alone on a horse (think of the imagery in films like David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia). Also in literature
you have orientalist works, just like academic studies of the East fall under orientalism. The Orient in
most of these examples captures the imagination, and evokes a very specific kind of image, with often
erotic associations. Often the images suggest decadence and lascivity, a kind of looseness which is
seductive, but at the same time there is an implicit moral message about the dangers of such luxury. The
Orient is thus represented as full of mystery and secrets. Its people are represented as being very
enigmatic, very indirect, as persons you cannot easily get to know and hence as individuals who might
be unreliable. The implicit message these images and texts bring about is that the orient might be
threatening, and that, therefore, it needs to be brought under control. And that message acts as a kind
of alibi for the civilizing mission of the West. This kind of imagery is e.g. infamously represented in a
comic strip with which we, as Belgian children, made an acquaintance with Chinese culture: Hergé’s
renderings of ‘Tintin in China’.
Others have made analyses of the biases and prejudices that speak from such an imagery. In the
architectural world these biases are also present, albeit in a form that u often difficult to decipher. One
example, deftly analyzed by Gülsüm Baydar, is the famous volume of Banister Fletcher on the world
history of architecture (first edition 1896). This volume is significant for many reasons, among them the
fact that it is the first attempt at writing a world history of architecture – which is in itself a daring and
ambitious undertaking. Banister Fletcher thus already starts from the assumption that also other parts
of the world – outside of historical Europe – might harbor valuable architecture, in itself a recognition of
the value of other cultures. Nevertheless the way he represents and maps these ‘other’ architectures
reveals colonialist and imperialist overtones. In his ‘tree of architecture’, the non-European architectural
heritages are represented as branches that spread out from the main trunk. Thus he features Egyptian,
Assyrian, Peruvian, Indian, Mexican, Chinese and Japanese architecture on the lower branches. The
European styles, however, occupy the higher levels of the tree, with Greek and Roman antiquity solidly
positioned on the trunk, as a fountainhead from which the rest of history springs. European traditions
are thus seen as ‘historical styles’, meaning that they contain the seeds for further development. The
non-European styles are ‘non-historical’, meaning they represent some eternal past (or some eternal
present for that matter), and are not expected to further develop or produce any meaningful offspring
in the foreseeable future. Hence the superiority of the European styles is literally inscribed into this
figure. There is no way, in the imagination of Fletcher, that the non-European styles could measure up
to them.
Gülsüm Baydar is quite critical of Fletcher’s representation. She comments that
“… Fletcher’s method tames the nonhistorical styles by submitting them to the same framework
of architectural analysis as the Western ones. (…) Indian and Chinese and Renaissance and
modern turn into conveniently commensurable and hence comparable categories”
She blames Fletcher for committing “historiographical violence…”, since he doesn’t recognize that his
‘comparative method’ overlooks all kinds of differences in historical, cultural, material, social and
economic conditions, which in fact make up for quite some differences in the way architecture is
conceived, built and experienced in different parts of the world.xi In ancient Chinese cultures, e.g.,
architecture is not counted among the fine arts, and the knowledge of how to build temples and palaces
remained for a very long time in the hands of craftsmen rather than intellectuals. Hence when Liang
Sicheng wrote the first history of Chinese architecture in the 1930s and 1940s, he was not building upon
a body of knowledge that was easily accessible, but had to puzzle together fragments he found in many
different types of texts with careful interpretations of material remains that were far and few between
them. This work, one can also argue, in fact is already the result of a cultural exchange, since Liang
Sicheng was academically trained in the United States, and his very understanding of architecture and
architectural history was based upon this training. I don’t think however that we should call his work
‘historiographical violence’ – it rather was a rescue operation – but at the same time we should be
willing to accept that architecture as a category only entered Chinese discourse and Chinese practice
through the cultural exchange with the West.
All this of course complicates matters when it comes to the relation between architecture and the
representation of national identity. In the 19th century, when national states were being formed as a
quasi-universal and even inescapable format structuring how people organize their societies,
architectural history took off as an important academic discipline because it was seen as offering crucial
narratives that helped anchoring the identity of these states in a clearly identifiable past. Architectural
history along with preservation of monuments went a long way in helping to solidify the idea of national
development and national identity, by providing a teleological story that interconnected the distant past
with the present and the future.xii In that sense also Liang Sicheng’s architectural history of China
certainly was helpful to create a sense of community and shared values in a country that was struggling
to find its own path to the future. Whereas his architectural history on an ideological plane might have
resonated best with the nationalist intentions of Chiang Kai-shek’s regime, it was to a certain extent also
useful to the new communist leaders. Although Liang Sicheng lost the battle to have the walls and gates
of old Beijing preserved, he was called upon to ponder about ways to develop national emblems and
national building styles.xiii
I want to stress however that this explicit relation between architecture and national identity is not
necessarily a stable one. This is what Abidin Kusno refers to, in talking about architecture and
nationalism:
“Architecture is linked to nationalism when its 'semiotic' functioning organizes solidarities for a
limited sovereign community as well as distinguishes the community from “outsiders.” The capacity
of architecture to perform such role of subjection for the nation however relies upon not only the
ways in which architecture is produced and represented, but also upon how it is imagined, received
and ignored collectively. Since architecture lies within the framework set by the nation, we can also
suggest the possibility of architecture transforming the framework within which its meanings are
constructed. Similarly, no matter how progressive an architectural form and space may look like, it is
still adaptable to the functioning of fascistic political regimes.”xiv
4. Architecture at large
For me, the most interesting contributions to recent historiography of modern architecture are not
necessarily to be found in the continuation of architectural histories focusing on national monuments
and producing new versions of a canon of names and works. I would argue that throughout the 20th
century architecture has been expanding its field, and that architectural historiography should follow
suit. The Modern Movement already was to a large extent anti-monumental and anti-canonical. Its
heroic protagonists in the 1920s focused on housing and on architectural as leverage to improving
societal conditions. For people like Ernst May, Bruno Taut, Mart Stam or Hannes Meyer, modern
architecture was first of all about improving conditions of life for the masses. What was at stake in their
housing projects and new towns, was how to provide workers and families with modern amenities and
modern spaces in order to enable modern lifestyles that would be emancipatory rather than oppressive.
Hence they were not seeking glory for themselves by creating unique buildings that would for eternity
testify of their genius, but they focusing their efforts on creating everyday environments for everyday
people. That is certainly ‘expanding the field’ to me.
Likewise Aldo Rossi’s understanding of architecture was bound up with his understanding of the city:
architecture for him was not about sole buildings, but about buildings that made up part of an urban
whole – either by standing out as ‘primary elements’ or by being part of a wider tissue. His anchoring of
architecture in urban contexts that are always already historically inscribed and culturally significant
again widens the scope of architecture, not limiting it to individual masterworks, but seeing it as part
and parcel of the built framework of everyday life. Such an understanding of architecture has also been
supported by works of sociologists such as Henri Lefebvre or Michel de Certeau, who also put emphasis
on the city and on the everyday, and who figure widely in recent contributions to architectural history
(see e.g. the work of Mary McLeod, Lukas Stanek, Kenny Cupers, a.o.).
Another way to expand the field of architectural history and theory has been to look not only at
architects as the heroes of the narratives, but also look at clients, contractors or users. Alice Friedman’s
‘Women and the Making of the Modern House’ (1998) was a major breakthrough in this respect, but
also Rem Koolhaas’s recent Biennale exhibition in Venice, ‘Fundamentals’ (2014), can be seen as a
contribution to this opening up. Following up on the inspiration of his 1978 volume ‘Delirious New York’,
this exhibition seeks out the recent history of building elements – doors, ceilings, staircases, walls,
balconies, … - in order to clarify architecture’s role in the production of modernity. In such a set-up,
architecture is not at all about the major geniuses creating singular master pieces, but rather about the
orchestration of all kinds of material inventions and technologies that change the way we relate to our
environment.
What Koolhaas and his team were doing in Venice, is significant, I would argue, for an important shift in
how we see this discipline of architecture, and its related discourses of architectural history and theory.
Rather than remain within its disciplinary boundaries, focusing upon masterpieces and masterminds, the
most important contributions to the field are those that open up to interdisciplinary dialogues with
other disciplines – history, social sciences, anthropology, geography, etc. These efforts can be seen as
contributing to a better understanding of the well-known aphorism of Winston Churchill, claiming that
‘We shape our buildings, thereafter they shape us.’ For me the most important ambition of architectural
theory and history has to do with this aphorism: to understand how it is that we are shaped by the
buildings that we shape. In order to foster that understanding, I think we should become more
conscious about how we think of the relationship between buildings (or built spaces) and social
constellations.
I have argued elsewhere that the relationship between spaces and social processes is viewed in the
literature according to different models, three of which I see as the most basic ones.xv In the first of
these three models, space is seen as a relatively neutral receptor of socio-economic or cultural
processes. The second model regards spatial articulations as possible instruments in bringing about
particular social processes. This model engages the built environment in a much more active way as the
instigator of social or cultural change. The third model, which encompasses aspects of the first two,
envisages the built environment as a stage on which social processes are played out. In the same way as
the staging makes certain actions and interactions possible or impossible within a theatre play, the
spatial structure of buildings, neighbourhoods and towns accommodates and frames social
transformations. In conceiving of spatial arrangements as the stage on which social life unfolds, the
impact of social forces on architectural and urban patterns is recognized (because the stage is seen as
the result of social forces) while at the same time spatial patterns are seen as modifying and structuring
social phenomena. The difference with the first model – space as receptor– is that the agency of spatial
parameters in producing and reproducing social reality is more fully recognized. The difference with the
second model – space as instrument – is that the theatrical metaphor is far from deterministic, and that
this thought model thus allows for a better understanding of the interplay between forces of
domination and forces of resistance. The third model of ‘space as stage’ thus is the model that is most
promising for engaging interdisciplinary efforts to understand the relation between people and space.
In the increasingly abundant literature applying postcolonial perspectives on architecture and urbanism,
this approach is often adopted, yielding interesting results. Postcolonial studies of colonial planning and
architecture usually bring to the fore how these interventions only rarely achieved the intended results.
These studies do show, however, that the modern urban spaces that were produced by modernist
planning and architecture functioned as catalysts for forms of behaviour that were definitely new and
modern – if not the docile kind of ‘modern’ desired by the colonizers. Abidin Kusno e.g. discusses the
workings of the urban space in Djakarta as absolutely crucial for the construction of a national
Indonesian subject as well as for forms of resistance that work against dominant political forces.xvi Jyoti
Hosagrahar discerns ‘indigenous modernities’ in Delhi, arguing that the confrontation between imported
modernism and local realities created urban and dwelling spaces where colonialism was negotiated
rather than imposed – acknowledging the two way logic of spaces that are on the one hand imposing a
certain order while on the other hand opening up cracks and gaps that allow for inventive
reinterpretations and uses that exceed what was intended by those who planned them.xvii
5. New conceptual tools?
Given all this, we should question whether we can get along in architectural history and theory with the
categories we have used thus far. Is ‘modernism’ still a term that might be vital as an adequate response
to modernity (or modernities)? Or terms such as ‘avant-garde’? Is there still an ‘avant-garde’ out there
or is the term only useful to describe a historical phenomenon? What about ‘utopia’? Are
postmodernism, poststructuralism and postcolonialism adequate terms to describe our current
condition and the responses to it? Is critical regionalism still something we want to advocate? And what
about categories such as postcriticality, posthumanism or non-representational theory?
One can discuss all these different concepts, and they all might be useful to some extent. For me the
most pressing issues however have to deal with two questions:
1) How to frame the ‘epistemology of architectural discourse’?
2) How to engage with issues of sustainability?
With respect to the first question, I would like to refer to Duanfang Lu. In her chapter for ‘The Sage
Handbook of Architectural Theory’, called ‘Entangled Modernities’, she claims that
“the recognition of other modernities has to be posited at the level of epistemology in order to
imagine an open globality based not on asymmetry and dominance but on connectivity and
dialogue on equal basis. It is important (…) to recognize the legitimacies of different
knowledges.”xviii
This is an interesting position to take, although I must admit that I don’t find it easy to implement in
practice. Duanfang Lu herself refers to the Chinese architectural discourse of the 1960s, which linked up
discussions of sobriety with references to vernacular architecture elsewhere in the world – bypassing as
it were the First and Second World in a conversation that only concerned ‘peripheral’ countries. I can
see that she understands this type of discourse as one that doesn’t give in to hegemonic assumptions
about the role of center and periphery. I am not so sure, however, whether it is really different
epistemologies that are at stake here.
In a way Gülsüm Baydar hints upon a similar attitude, when she insists on the incommensurability of
different kinds of knowledge:
“Writing postcoloniality in architecture questions architecture’s intolerance to difference, to the
unthought, to its outside. For it embraces the premise that ‘when the other speaks, it is in other
terms’.”xix
This position, which might be inspired by Jean-François Lyotard’s idea about ‘Le Differend’, however
threatens to make exchange very, very difficult. If we cannot translate other types of knowledge into
terms that are understandable to us (and by ‘us’ I refer in this case to the international community of
scholars in architectural history and theory), I fail to see how we would be able to respect them. In that
sense I find Esra Akcan’s position more promising. Akcan wonders whether current trends of
postcolonial criticism have not been too much about exposing how ‘Architecture’ is exclusive rather
than inclusive, while they fail to offer any directions for a critical practice.xx For her it makes sense to
rather explore a ‘humanist’ trajectory of postcolonial theory, a trajectory that would emphasize
(commensurable) diversity instead of (incommensurable) difference.
The second question I raise – about sustainability – is also very pertinent and topical. The current
insights into the anthropogenic phenomena of climate change, decreasing bio-diversity and
overconsumption of resources necessitate us to re-think our relation to the planet. The built
environment is one of the major factors contributing to all that, so we have to be aware in architecture
about these issues. For me they necessitate a re-engagement with the legacy of modernism, because, as
I wrote recently in an article with my colleague Han Vandevyvere:
“Rather than seeing modernism as purely technocratic, and hence as the culprit responsible for
the depletion of natural resources, we claim that these social and emancipatory aspects of
modernism should be taken as the starting point to reframe, renegotiate and reinvent the
‘project of modernity’ advocated by Jürgen Habermas. Modernism, we claim, was indeed about
negotiating the constraints of nature, about using science and technology to arrive at a more
just society. Translated into the terminology of sustainability, we could state that it was about
‘people’ taking into account ‘planet’ and accepting ‘profit’ as a driving force. Hence, rather than
discrediting modernism, we should build upon its legacy of negotiating natural, technological,
social, political and cultural conditions in order to further the emancipation of individuals and
collectivities.”xxi
These considerations can be related to what Greig Crysler, Stephen Cairns and I stated in our joint
introduction to ‘The Sage Handbook of Architectural Theory’, where we invoked three different, though
related, concepts as a means of fleshing out the idea of an architectural theory in an expanded field:
provincializing (Chakrabarty), worlding (Spivak) and gathering (Latour). Provincializing refers to the need
to simultaneously decenter and activate principles such as rationality, secularism, or social justice –
which are not only central ideas in modernism, but at the same time inspirational concepts that drive
progressive forces in many different situations and practices. By recognizing the situated character and
differences in many different parts of the world, we should not, on the other hand, agree that these
differences necessarily discredit these ideals as ideals. Worlding, a term used by Spivak (1990), draws
attention to the epistemic violence implicated in imperialism, in particular ‘the assumption that when
the colonizers come to a world, they encounter it as uninscribed earth upon which they write their
inscriptions’ (1990, 129). The idea of the ‘Third World’ is, for Spivak, a striking instance of this
homogenizing process. Yet, this process also contains within it possibilities for a ‘counter-worlding’ or a
new ‘worlding of the world’ in which alternate, situated possibilities for being in the world are
articulated. As in Chakrabarty’s logic of provincialization, this is a self-contradictory process that involves
‘un-learning’ the privileges of speaking from the centre as much as it does learning and propagating new
forms of knowledge. Latour’s (2004) reappropriation of Heidegger’s conception of ‘gathering’, brings us
to the most architectural framing of these three related themes. Latour’s consideration of contemporary
technology, leads him to consider the way certain things have gathering or relational effects. The work
of theory, for Latour, is not merely a matter of ‘debunking’, but one of assembly. The theorist ‘is one
who offers the participants arenas in which to gather’. The critic is ‘the one for whom, if something is
constructed, then it means it is fragile and thus in great need of care and caution’. Hence we can see
that we as theorists and historians have to pay attention to these ‘matters of concern’ – which is why I
didn’t want to conclude this lecture without at least mentioning the issue of sustainability, a major
‘matter of concern’ which should be at the forefront of our thinking.xxii
i
. Marshall Berman, All that is Solid melts into Air. The Experience of Modernity (1982), Verso, London, 1985, p. 16
ii
. Jürgen Habermas, "Modernity - an Incomplete Project", in Hal Foster (ed.), The Anti-Aesthetic. Essays on
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