"Japan was the first traditional country to enter modernization ahead of other non-western countries"
Tradition + Modernity in Architecture & Design
Read Javad Eiraji`s Exclusive Talk with American Professor & Academician Prof. Dr. Gevork Hartoonian from University of Canberra, Australia
Gevork Hartoonian is Emeritus Professor of architectural history at the University of Canberra, Australia, and holds a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, USA. He has taught in American universities, including Pratt Institute and Columbia University, NYC. He has been visiting professor of architectural history at Tongji University, Shanghai, in 2013 and 2016. During these visits, he also delivered lectures at the Southeast University, Nanjing, and at the China Academy of Arts, Hangzhou. Hartoonian is most recently the author of Mies Contra Le Corbusier: The Frame Inevitable (Routledge, Sept. 2024),The Visibility of Modernization in Architecture: A Debate, and Towards a Critique of Architecture’s Contemporaneity: 4 Essays (both Routledge, 2023), Reading Kenneth Frampton: A Commentary on Modern Architecture, 1980 (2022), Anthem Press, UK, Time, History and Architecture: essays on critical historiography (Routledge, 2020/2018). His previous books include, among others, Global Perspectives on Critical Architecture, Routledge 2015. Architecture and Spectacle: a critique (Routledge, 2016/2012) and The Mental Life of the Architectural Historian (2013). The Korean and Thai edition of his Ontology of Construction (Cambridge University Press, 1994) was published in 2010 and 2017. He is the editor of Valences of Historiography: Essays on Architectural History, forthcoming, Routledge
Javad Eiraji: What is the meaning of tradition and what is the relationship between tradition, culture and identity
Gevork Hartoonian: These three ideas or concepts were central to the emergence and development of modernism in art and architecture. However, since the 1990s, and with the rise of global capitalistic modernization, we cannot reflect on these issues along with the linear notion of time and temporality. The transformation from mechanical to digital reproducibility has intensified the experience of time globally, and the theoretical premises of the duality between modernity and tradition have been transformed, if not invalidated. Dialectically, the same development has shifted the attention of critical practice to non-Euro-American regions where an investigation of their history from the point of view of the notion of delay might provide a fertile historico-theoretical perspective for critical writing of architectural history but most likely for an architectural practice that would investigate the present intensified temporality instead of reiterating the undialectical rapport between tradition, culture, and identity. In the present globally digitalized culture, modernity is the only existing tradition as it was classical for the Western world. The issue of culture remains problematic in world regions where cultural values and norms are not thoroughly secularized
Javad Eiraji: How do you describe tradition in architecture and design? Is it needed to have it in contemporary architecture of the world
Gevork Hartoonian: Yes and no! As I was saying earlier, modernism is the only recognized tradition in architecture today. However, in my recent book, Mies Contra Le Corbusier, I posit the need to investigate two sets of interrelated issues: 1- The idea of delay and the architectonic consequences of modernization in each non-western country. 2- To present a materialist analysis of the present in each country as the embodiment of the radical seeds of the past. This is a comprehensive approach to tradition wherein everything existing in the dust of history won’t imply tradition
Javad Eiraji: How should we create interactions between past and today? Tradition and modernity
Gevork Hartoonian: I have already responded to this question in my earlier statements. Here, I would suggest to considering Kenneth Frampton’s formulation of Critical Regionalism as another response to the complex rapport between tradition and modernity. However, since the 1990s, digitalization and the wall-to-wall commodification of culture at a global scale have been considered. I suggest the earlier proposed two sets of investigations suggest a different agenda, especially in conjunction with vigorous theorizations offered by historians and critics
Javad Eiraji: Which factors must be cared while tradition is being injected to today`s life
Gevork Hartoonian: We should not forget the differences between tradition and culture. The latter is a religious phenomenon. The entire classical architecture in Europe benefited from symbolism attributed to Christianity. I say this in consideration to the historical fact that secularization and demystification of tradition took place in France and then was inevitably accepted in other countries as a historical phenomenon. It’s part of the historicity of modernization that most non-western countries are looking for new responses to social housing, for example, beyond what tradition has/or could be offered today. Again, it’s the task of the historian to consider the concept of delay as a two-edge critical toll, relating the delay of secularization dialectically with the resistance to fully absorb the spectacle of commodity fetishism as it happened in Dubai, for example
Javad Eiraji: Can you tell a successful example in contemporary architecture of the world which interactions between tradition and modernity can be seen in it? Which factors (forms, meaning, function, user, geography, history and etc.) make this project successful
Gevork Hartoonian: Japan and China, speaking relatively. Japan was the first country to enter modernization ahead of other non-western countries when capitalism was not yet spread globally. That is why Japan has successfully articulated the rapport between modernity and tradition. A similar assessment also shows why Alvar Aalto's work still stands tall. Many Chinese architects do exemplary work even though their country has entered the modernization process and capitalism has emerged globally. Having said this, some exceptional architects in other countries know these issues and produce excellent work, Alvaro Siza
Javad Eiraji: As the last question, usually during tradition, history and culture studies, we come to a keyword “IDENTITY” and while we research about identity, we come to an important question “WHO ARE YOU” ?!
My last question is the same, WHO ARE YOU
Gevork Hartoonian: Identity was also related to the regime of national bourgeoisie or was associated with religious tendencies. I am an Armenian Iranian, American citizen, and permanent resident in Australia. You figure out who I might be
Javad Eiraji: Thanks again for joining TraMod TALKS
