Global and Local Architecture and Urbanism since the End of the Cold War

Between 1989 and 1993 the map of Europe was transformed. In Romania the final results of this seismic shift came to a conclusion only this year with membership of the European Union. The effects of the break down of - what was called in the West - the Eastern Block have had far reaching social, political and economic consequences. It is inevitable that the effects will also be felt in architecture and urbanism.

Before I get to architecture and urbanism, however, I must put them into their wider context.

The end of the Cold War is often presented as either the beginning of a new era in world economics and politics, called “globalisation”, or as the final or the latest stage in the globalisation of international economies and politics.

Globalisation is summarised by Jürgen Habermas as “the cumulative processes of a worldwide expansion of trade and production, commodity and financial markets, fashions, the media and computer programs, news and communications networks, transportation systems and flows of migration, the risks engendered by large-scale technology, environmental damage and epidemics, as well as organised crime and terrorism.”

We can trace the origins of the institutions and ideas behind these changes to the Second World War. The war was immediately preceded by the Great Depression. The war itself exposed the full extent of the genocidal policies of the Axis powers. The memory of the Great Depression and the experience of the Holocaust convinced the American victors, in particular, that the world economy and humanity itself could not be left solely in the hands of individual nation-states. In 1944 the Bretton Woods agreement set up an international monetary control system that led to the establishment of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. In 1945 the United Nations was inaugurated and in 1948 the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was made. The underlying philosophy behind these institutions was that of the European Enlightenment, which itself was the basis of the American Constitution, and was founded in a belief that human reason would lead to a better world free from superstition and oppression.

The full effect of these institutional changes was delayed by the division of the northern hemisphere, immediately after the war, into two major political blocks dominated, respectively, by the United States and Russia. The breakdown of the Russian or Eastern Block, largely due its economic failure, in 1989, left the system promoted by the United States and its allies in the dominant position. This system, which I have just described, extended worldwide and accentuated by recent developments in communication systems, is the foundation of what is called “globalisation”.

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The spread of transnational corporations and consumerism went hand-in-hand with the spread of the culture that supported it. As the post-1989 expansion of this system was based on its success and the corresponding failure of its communist counterpart, it carried with it the attractiveness of that success. This has led to one of the notable and commonly observed consequences of globalisation – the growing uniformity of consumer products and the decline of local culture towards an increasingly consistent western – or more properly North Atlantic - type. This is often called “homogenisation”.

This can be found in all aspects of culture, from MacDonalds to Nike and from Mercedes to Modernism. It has an architectural and urban effect as much as it has an effect on fashion and food.

In the precise period when the foundations of globalisation were laid, international Modernism became the dominant ideology in North Atlantic architectural and artistic culture. Unlike its colonial predecessors, Modernism was not considered by its promoters to be merely the imposition of a superior cultural type on inferior peoples, it was considered to be a universal mark of progress free from the retrogressive influence of local traditions. It was, in fact, the symbolic expression of the European Enlightenment. The philosophy of Modernism was exactly that it was rational and so universally applicable, would overturn the superstitions and traditions of the past and was progressive and therefore historically inevitable. It had become identified as the International Style by 1933 and by 1948 had become so dominant in the architectural profession and so widespread in those countries within the Western Block that it came simply to be called “modern”.

International economies opened up to the free movement of capital in the early 1990s, including not only Russia and the splinter states of the Soviet Union but also China. The companies that could respond most effectively to this new freedom of capital movement were those that had already been operating in free-market economies and many of those had developed sophisticated marketing strategies based on product branding. These transnational corporations were and still are predominantly North Atlantic in origin.

Now, architecture is both a business and an art. Architectural firms, like other businesses, make a profit from the production of culturally identifiable products. It will come as no surprise to see that, as businesses, architectural firms have acted in exactly the same way as other corporations - expanding their commercial interests into an increasingly global economy.

If we look at the 55 major architectural firms that have offices in other global regions we can see that 22 of these are from the USA, 15 are from the UK and a number of others from Australia, Ireland and Canada. Indeed, 80 per cent of these firms are from Anglophone countries with long-established free-market economies and North Atlantic cultures.

If we look at the rate at which their offices opened up in other global regions, we can see a pattern of growth from 1989 accelerating to the present. It moved slowly from 1989 as there was a deep recession in the early 1990s and global markets only gradually liberalised but, once the world economy had recovered and Russia and China had opened their markets in 1993, the pace of growth accelerated. Indeed, this pattern very closely corresponds to other global indicators such as the increase in the movement of global capital and the growth of internet hosts over the same period.

The product that these practices sold was also a uniform North Atlantic brand. Like other brands, it carried with it the mark of western success. Modernism had grown up with and by this time had come to represent the very instruments of globalisation. The Modernist glass-walled office block was a symbol of the successful global corporation and is built and continues to be built in locations and climates totally unsuited to this form of construction (indeed, as an understanding of environmental impact grows it is doubtful if it was ever suitable as a type even in the moderate climates of western Europe where it had its origin). The tall glass-walled office building is now so widespread that it has become the Coca Cola of architecture. Similarly, Modernism had become the defining style of the other symbols of global economic expansion – the airport and the shopping mall.

The spread of these architectural and urban forms are just one aspect of the homogenisation of culture observed by many commentators as international politics and economics become increasingly linked by improved communication and transport into a global system.

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Globalisation has its detractors; it has those who deny its existence and has its own brand of – ironically - global protestors. It is, however, widely accepted that - barring a major catastrophe – the increased level of contact, influence and dependency of each part of the world on every other part of the world is unavoidable. This may lead to the assumption that not only is the homogenisation of culture unavoidable but is, as a kind of hyper-modernity, actually desirable.

There is, however, another side to the phenomenon. To understand how this other side is also a part of globalisation, we need to look at how our political and economic world is changing.

The international political system is still based on the nation-state principle established by the Treaty of Westphalia in the mid seventeenth century whereby nation-states had sole jurisdiction over their internal activities and populations and were the only legitimate practitioners of warfare. At that time, states were ruled, as of right, by aristocratic dynasties. After the French revolution, however, states could no longer rely on a command of their population based on feudal obligation. In the nineteenth century, unity under a duke, prince or monarch was gradually replaced by loyalty to the abstract idea of the state, or nationalism. As states continued to compete with one another economically and militarily they needed another means of commanding their populations. A new culture of patriotism and national sacrifice was used to draw, and even force together, disparate groups of people, or nations, into single linguistic and political units or nation-states.

Since the Second World War regional trading and political associations, most notably (but not exclusively) the European Union, have been linking previously militarily competing states. The end of the Cold War has, perhaps permanently, unlocked a 50-year stand-off where the world was divided into two opposing heavily armed camps. These changes have transformed the nationalist political landscape. Warfare has ceased to be an acceptable or even viable means of settling international disputes. At the same time, the virtually universal liberalisation of markets and the free movement of capital across borders have taken primary economic control away from individual states. As a result, aggressive nationalism is no longer a functional necessity in the political and economic management of the nation-state.

The resultant decline of nationalism has allowed nations and peoples contained and suppressed within nationalist states to recover their identity. From Slovenia to Scotland, from Catalonia to the Czech Republic, from Decentralisation Laws in Argentina to the 74th Amendment of the Indian Constitution, regions and nations are re-emerging, languages are being revived and local identities are being re-asserted. Not only has globalisation been the catalyst for this phenomenon, global communication has been its instrument. The north European Sami, a nation dispersed across four states – Russia, Finland, Sweden and Norway – maintains political unity partly through a Sami language website. The survival of the Inuktituk language amongst the widely dispersed Canadian Inuit has been facilitated by the use of Inuktituk satellite broadcasts.

This is part of the volatile politics of identity that underlies such divergent phenomena as Muslim extremism and the United Nations adoption of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, only this month. Identity politics can be seen both as a reaction to the threat to identity created by global homogenisation and as an outcome of the new freedoms offered by the liberalisation of international politics and the economy.

This phenomenon is recognised by most commentators on globalisation as one of its more unexpected outcomes and, on the opposite pole to homogenisation, is called “localisation”. Localisation is, quite obviously, associated with both tradition and territory. These were two aspects of society that the Enlightenment and Modernism believed they would eliminate, as reason and progress turned us into world citizens free from the malign influence of an irrational history.

As architecture is a reflection of society, we would expect to find an architectural expression of localisation. In fact, in the architectural profession, dominated by the ideology of Modernism, it is hard to find. Architecture remains one of the primary expressions of global homogenisation and the architectural profession generally have nothing but contempt for the small group of architects that practice traditional architecture.

We have to look to urbanism for the mainstream architectural response to localisation. Since the late 1970s is has become increasingly obvious that Modernist planning had created hostile and dysfunctional places in comparison with the traditional towns and cities they replaced. In the last fifteen years an urbanist movement has developed that is specifically concerned with the individuality and identity of place. One of the earliest and the most successful is the American Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) founded in 1993. It seeks “the redevelopment of towns and cities [to] respect historical patterns, precedents and boundaries.” A Vision of Europe was founded a year previously in Bologna with the objective of “the creation of villages, neighbourhoods, cities and even metropolises …. comparable to their historic counterparts.” Ten years later, a sister organisation to the CNU, the Council for European Urbanism (CEU), was established in Bruges and promotes “the distinctive character of European cities, towns, villages and countryside ... in keeping with regional identity”.

While there is an association between the minority traditional movement in architecture and the urbanist movement, the return to traditional urbanism has a broader base. The UK Government’s 1999 report, Towards an Urban Renaissance, was written by a committee chaired by the leading Modernist, Richard Rogers. In common with the other urbanist organisations it had a concern for identity and context seeking a “diversity [that] reflects the full richness of the English urban tradition.” The Director of Municipal Construction for the redevelopment of Berlin following German unification was Hans Stimman who said, “I wanted to go back to a city structure that I call a European city.” In 2006 the Academy of Urbanism was established in the UK and Ireland by the president of the Royal Institute of British Architects and asserts that “the design of spaces and buildings should be influenced by their context and seek to enhance local character and heritage.”

It may seem strange that an architectural establishment that is coming to see the significance and benefits of traditional urbanism cannot see the contradiction in a continuing insistence on an ideology based specifically on overturning tradition in architecture. National and international heritage organisations, government departments and city authorities feel obliged to follow the overwhelming view of the professions that must be called upon for construction and reconstruction and the principles of Modernism have become increasingly institutionalised. The only International Non-Governmental Organisation that links the architecture of tradition and territory, the urbanism of the individuality and identity of place, and the skills required for their execution is INTBAU.

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As the countries of Eastern Europe have joined the global economic and political system, growth and change has and will be rapid. As we have seen, a major part of the system is the Modernist brand, the glamour of its association with an ascendant North Atlantic culture and the spread of major architectural businesses and star architects to promote it. The result is already plain to see – the homogenisation of towns and cities and the erosion of local identity.

Resistance to this process will be dismissed as retrogressive and, as in Eastern Europe, when the economy and political order have been so recently overturned, it is hard to withstand the pressure to embrace the architectural symbols of the incoming and triumphant culture. But there is so much to lose and, as I hope I have demonstrated, such resistance is not an attempt to hold back the tide of globalisation and progress. On the contrary, it is very much a part of globalisation and progress. There is no need to apologise for the desire to retain local identity. The retention of the local and the authentic is as much a part of globalisation as Starbucks and MTV.

INTBAU is trying to ensure that this message is spread throughout the world. It is a slow task and is undertaken in the face of a monolithic and hostile professional establishment. We can only hope that the architectural profession eventually comes to more closely follow the localising face of globalisation - after all, architecture more than any other product is irrevocably and inevitably always local. We can only hope and fight for such a change and it could take a major upheaval to bring it about. It may be that the environmental crisis - the global issue to end all global issues - will be such an upheaval. The local is almost always sustainable.

© Robert Adam, September 2007