It's not the canon, it's how you use it

How to Cite: Verde Zein, Ruth. "It's not the canon, it's how you use it". Dearq no. 36 (2023): 37-45. DOI: https://doi.org/10.18389/dearq36.2023.05

What are canons? How do they come into existence and how do they develop? Is the idea behind them different from that of a paradigm? How do canons permeate architectural history narratives and come to frame the educational and professional fields? Why is this felt to be a problem? Are canons an inevitable trait of our field? Can we move forward just by shuffling, expanding or regionalizing them? Or would this be a cure that made the poison stronger rather than eliminating it? This essay considers these issues and raises critical questions about the current meaning and use of architectural canons. It suggests that, for the moment, we should continue to use them but in less inappropriate ways, until it becomes possible to propose a non-canonical history of architecture and a non-canonical practice.

Keywords: architectural history, historiography, architectural education, architectural practice, canons.

introduction

Throughout the past long century, pioneers of modern architecture, or more precisely their organic intellectual deputies, have made smart and successful use of canonization processes to establish what we nowadays believe to be the accepted definition of “modern” and -by extension- of “postmodern” and “contemporary” architecture (Zein 2022). Frameworks derived from canonical architectural works of this kind are presented in grand panoramic historical compendiums, which are used to assign the seal of “truly modern” to a limited and selective group of architectural works. By doing so, they define boundaries, arbitrate further inclusions and exclusions from the canon and act as arbiters of what should be accepted into it and what should be left outside, categorized as “other”. In their practice, architects and architecture professors corroborate the canonized selection of buildings these compendiums present, tacitly reinforcing their preeminence and their validity as the accepted milestones of recent architectural history.

This is perhaps an unavoidable pattern. Maybe canons and canonization processes are meant to occur, as inevitable by-products of educational and professional activities in practice-based professional fields such as architecture (Foqué 2010). Architecture is a field where there seems to be – and perhaps will always be – a strong drive always to give prominence to a fixed (or a changing or even a volatile) pantheon of accredited works and authors to refer to in historical studies and that underlie design processes. Canonical pieces of architecture are examples that have gained prestige, by being repeatedly presented and praised both as great examples of a legacy from the past and as proper beacons of the future. They illustrate the oft-repeated tacit aphorism that architecture is not to be constantly reinvented at the dawn of each new week. Familiarity with canonical architectural works serves as a regulatory device that enables the incorporation of novices to the trade, and their prevalence serves to assuage the uncertainties of a decidedly unstable world. Yet, even if this drive is considered unavoidable – and we must acknowledge canonization processes as a convenient (albeit precarious) fabrication – it is still fundamental to scrutinize and criticize canons and/or canonization processes. This is a wiser option than simply ignoring, accepting, or “naturalizing” their existence.

One of the principal reasons such criticism is important is to make it easier to understand how the prevailing architectural canons have been used (or misused) to reinforce the narrow-minded dominance of a very reduced number of exemplary cases to define (modern) architecture. Critical approaches are needed to evince how, despite being based on exclusion and bias, the current architectural canon directly affects architectural education and practice around the world, and not always for the best. This situation is highly detrimental to everyone involved – and not only in the fields of education, research, and practice in the Global South, where it is, for obvious reasons, even more disruptive than in the North.

Limited, simplistic, canonization practices, which have existed at least since the mid-20^th century, are preventing the possibility of finding other, improved, ways of educating architects and engaging in the practice, fitter to meet the challenges, possibilities, and difficulties of 21^st century societies. The use of established, settled, antiquated, imperialist canonical narratives inherited from the 20^th century, and of examples of what merits being called “architecture” (especially, but not exclusively, in its modern and contemporary forms) hinders understanding of the complexities, variety, and vast array of methods used in architecture and urban environments around the world. As a result, all of us are impeded from learning from their achievements and from their mistakes.

what is a canon?

According to Barry Bergdoll, “canonization is a process of sifting through and giving shape – and legacy – to the artistic past.” (Zein 2022, 283). Who does the sifting? Based on what sort of beliefs and training background does a person make choices about what is, or is not fundamental? Can these choices be considered “universal”? For what specific purposes do they make sense? The word “background” implies geography: who you are (and how your beliefs were construed) is the result of an arbitrary combination of your personal and professional origins, which are shared with other people of the same and of previous generations and permeated by your awareness of gender, race and class, as well as by your local, regional, and national sense of belonging.

A critical examination of a canon first requires an assertion of its intrinsic non-universal nature. Any “canon” is a fabrication, derived from a relatively narrow set of circumstances; only subsequently is it elevated to the status of “generic” validity. That upgrade never happens solely on the basis of its own (possibly very high) merits. It is leveraged by an external combination of social, economic, cultural and political forces that are at play in a specific place and period. It is maintained by durable propaganda. The canonical “prestige” attributed to a work of art, a building, or an author involves an intentional movement akin to the way a magic trick is structured: it is the third step of an illusory process that turns the ordinary into something extraordinary, and then astounding.¹ To escape from this spell you must, as in Hans Christian Andersen's fable, be bold or naïve enough to declare the canon naked.

Canons do not come into existence fully formed: they start as non-canonical narratives and are then elevated to their positions of prestige by individuals or groups of persons (Bonta 1975, 1977). Their position is maintained by the constant reiteration of their status by other authors, professors, students; by you and by me. “One of the central engines in this [canonization] process has been the literary production of several historians/critics of architecture who have been active in the last hundred years” (Zein 2022, 297). The books written by these authors, and their availability all over the world, offer an easy way to teach architectural history, further consolidating the prevailing canons in the process.²

Many authors have already discussed the tricky issues of canons and canonization processes in architecture.³ Conscious of their very significant contributions, this essay proposes to briefly examine whether, in our field, canons behave in the same way as the “scientific paradigms” proposed by Thomas Kuhn in “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” (originally published in 1962). For, despite the similarities, there seem to be many important differences between the two concepts, which may help illuminate some aspects of the ways architectural canons perform.

Kuhn begins his book by giving history a central role in the proper understanding of what science is about: “History, if viewed as a repository for more than anecdote or chronology, could produce a decisive transformation in the image of science by which we are now possessed” (2012, 1; my emphasis). Understanding history, and learning from it, is a path to uncovering the deep (and historically determined) nature of our beliefs, which did not come into being solely as the result of observation and experience, since “an arbitrary element, compounded of personal and historical accident, is always a formative ingredient of the beliefs espoused by a given scientific community at a given time” (4). Despite its contingent nature, Kuhn accepts that the adoption of a set of beliefs by an interest group in order to (provisionally) regulate their field is perhaps inevitable: “that element of arbitrariness does not, however, indicate that any scientific group could practice its trade without some set of received beliefs” (4).

In the Postscript, written in 1969 seven years after the original publication of his groundbreaking book, Kuhn felt the need to clarify some of the ideas it contains, ideas that had been widely disseminated and subjected to critique: such as his use of the concept of “paradigm”. He understands that the definition of “paradigm” is circular in nature,⁴ and explains that the word was used in two different senses in his text. First, as a “constellation of beliefs, values, techniques, and so on shared by the members of a given community” and second, as “one sort of element in that constellation, the concrete puzzle-solutions which, employed as models or examples, can replace explicit rules as a basis for the solution of the remaining puzzles of normal science” (175).

In this second sense, paradigms are understood to be shared examples that help move the field forward: “scientists solve puzzles by modeling them on previous puzzle-solutions, often with only minimal recourse to symbolic generalizations”; “having seen the resemblance, grasped the analogy between two or more distinct problems, [they] can interrelate symbols and attach them to nature in the ways that have proved effective before”; by doing that, a scientist has “assimilated a time-tested and group-licensed way of seeing” (Kuhn 2012, 189).

Despite their success as tools to support research, paradigms are not meant to function as eternal beacons. Their usefulness tends to diminish with the development of the approaches they have helped bring to fruition, as a result of the mechanisms of “professionalization”, which lead to “an immense restriction of the scientist's vision and to considerable resistance to paradigm change. The science has become increasingly rigid” (64). In due time, anomalies that diverge from the set of rules defined by the current paradigm will erupt, either as a result of experimentation or because of newly-formulated theories. However, “anomaly appears only against the background provided by the paradigm. The more precise and far-reaching that paradigm is, the more sensitive an indicator it provides of anomaly and hence of an occasion for paradigm change”. The raison d'être of a paradigm is to give structure to the field, preventing any new current from dismantling it. “By ensuring that the paradigm will not be too easily surrendered, resistance guarantees that scientists will not be lightly distracted and that the anomalies that lead to paradigm change will [have to] penetrate existing knowledge to the core” (65). Despite resistance, change is expected; but it needs time and confirmation if it is to be rendered effective.

The differences between a purely scientific field and a practice-based one are numerous and, of course, do not reflect the quality or importance of the achievements in each field. Yet there are many similarities in the way a piece of knowledge is obtained by human beings, no matter the issue at hand. In a “digression” in his Postscript, Kuhn reflects on how knowledge is acquired, arguing

[…] that very different stimuli can produce the same sensations; that the same stimulus can produce very different sensations; and, finally, that the route from stimulus to sensation is in part conditioned by education. Individuals raised in different societies behave on some occasions as though they saw different things. If we were not tempted to identify stimuli one-to-one with sensations, we might recognize that they do so. (2012, 193)

He finishes his point even more explicitly: “Mere parochialism, I suspect, makes us suppose that the route from stimuli to sensation is the same for the members of all groups” (2012, 193). If this is valid for pure science, it is even more evident in the architectural field. In other words, as no one can ensure that the same stimuli will provoke the same responses in everyone, no matter the current “paradigm”, it can never legitimately claim to be a “universal” certainty based on “common” perceptions transformed into “common” beliefs, that are as a result deemed “universal”.

As for the differences, it is important to consider that in pure science, acquired knowledge (once it has been validated by a larger group of scientists) is by its nature un-grounded. A mathematical equation describing the constants of a natural phenomenon (the formula E=MC²for example) is supposed to work anywhere, at any time (or at least, that is what the status quo scientific paradigm affirms).

No similar situation exists de facto in any area of architectural achievement, despite the “universal” claims of the 20^th century modernist avant-garde, as classified and crystallized in canonical historiographical narratives. The place where a piece of architecture is located grants it its uniqueness. Its repetition and dissemination (if and when they are postulated as desirable) can only happen in a symbolic, not in a literal way. Yet, as part of our education, we have been trained to believe in the “unquestionability” of the supposedly universal status of what - based on a selected limited group of central European examples - has for a long time been called “modern” architecture. When it is, at the most, just the distillate juice of some local examples elevated, by the mechanism of prestige, into something that supposedly has “universal” validity. Thus, our current understanding of the nature of (modern) architecture remains permeated and defined by a set of enduring, though biased, canonical visions inherited from the last century. Our current “paradigms” (or better, canons) are not rationally and/or scientifically grounded at all. Their validity is not a certainty, and a “paradigm change” in our field does not need to be achieved by “disproving” them, just by acknowledging their essentially non-universal, parochial, and biased nature.

Canonical narratives, like paradigms, may play a role in giving “structure” to the learning and education of new generations of practitioners. That would not be so bad if they were used to open up possibilities that help initiate an understanding of the complexities of our field, instead of defining fixed boundaries that, more often than not, mirror other realities and reduce our own into a mirage, or worse, as a distortion. Furthermore, in a way that is similar to what happens with scientific paradigms, in due course current canonical narratives would tend to rigidity and to the aprioristic refusal of any other non-confirming and non-conforming knowledge. In contrast to science, canonical narratives in the architectural field are not read and accepted by our professional communities as transitory crutches. Historically, they have been given an almost supernatural regulatory role: nothing is expected to change, now or ever, as if these prestigious historical compendiums had been accepted as sacred books. Unlike in science, disproving history affirmations, pseudo-truths and the accumulation of new knowledge about the legacy of past and present (modern) architecture, does not easily grant the welcome possibility of a “paradigm shift”. Nor does it automatically promote any sort of “paradigm change” (Zein 2019, 102-125). And yet, the winter is coming – perhaps disguised as a tropical summer…

To understand why this rigidity occurs and why it is so hard to break, it may be useful to reexamine the first sense of Kuhn's concept of the paradigm, mentioned above: “a constellation of beliefs, values, techniques and so on shared by the members of a given community”. Sharing beliefs goes beyond sharing a set of accredited rational formulas. Politics, power games, academic disputes and so forth do have a say in the definition of current scientific paradigms. The same also occurs in practice-based areas, where “paradigms” – or canons, if you like – are even more firmly based on, and determined by, non-explicit ideological boundaries.

This is why, if we want to open our field up to the possibility of a “paradigm change” we need to raise awareness levels about the canonization processes, make the processes involved explicit and explain what they are and how they work. This is a task that requires as much reiteration as did the establishment of the canons in the first place. If current canons are to change (or they are to be replaced by other possibilities should that eventually become possible) they must from time to time be explicitly declared, questioned, criticized, and undermined.

This is not a straightforward endeavor, because ideological frameworks tend not to be evident as they are politically, economically, and socially empowered and enforced. Their nature is not in any way essentially “rational”, despite their convenience to the power group that promotes them. They are not easily dismantled, nor are they straightforwardly replaced by other supposedly better possibilities that claim to be more rational, ecological, and/or respectful towards life and nature. Even when the pressure to change is too great to be ignored, the canonical status quo framework does not significantly change. Instead, canons are more likely to adapt by swallowing and phagocytizing these “anomalies” and making them work, or seem to work from within.

This is what happens when, instead of critically questioning the status quo canons to try to change them we are lured into believing that engorging compendiums of architectural history by adding an infinite number “new” phenomena (possibly, by copying information from scholars around the world without citing sources) is sufficient to bring about an effective “paradigm change”. Shuffling and engorging the canon are distraction tactics. We may accept them for now, as better than nothing, as pragmatic steps while we keep on working on the path of change; but we may also be distracted by its apparently successful outcome.

And let us be careful: insisting, as we should, on discussing canons, we turn the debate into something “fashionable”, diluting its seriousness by promoting easy-to-grasp slogans, perhaps dooming the subject to rapid obsolescence. For such is the power of reification of our current media and consumer society: everything that is important and intended to activate change will be co-opted by the prevailing status quo to make sure things continue as before.

using canons with open eyes

Canons permeate architectural history narratives, affecting educational and professional fields alike. How do we counterpoint the prevalence of current canonical stances? How do we promote change?

Even taking into account their inadequacy, defectiveness, and incompleteness, any radical solution – such as eliminating all panoramic history manuals by a coup de grace – would be a careless proposition, disregarding a huge body of knowledge laboriously amassed by people from the many generations that preceded us. Furthermore, for practical reasons, such an idea would have few supporters among the community of professors and students. Instead, as a starting point, we might embark on a more diplomatic and strategic path. By accepting (for the moment) the inevitability of canonical processes and their effects, by continuing to use available history compendiums - pending the emergence of a practical alternative - and by reading them more appropriately and critically, it is still possible to bring about change, albeit in a more gradual and grounded way.

Let us first examine a central question. Why is history important in architectural education? This question may seem unnecessary, but it is not. Over the last century or so, architectural education (and practice) have been permeated by a significant rejection of history that relegates the discipline to a secondary, perfunctory, non-essential position. Otherwise, history would occupy the same position in educational programs as the practice of design (or at least, the same professor/student ratio). I can almost picture you reading this last phrase and smiling at my apparent naivety. And yet, an architect with a poor foundation in history – and I am not talking about the ability to quote the names and dates of a bunch of canonical examples – is, has been, and always will be a danger to the profession, to the quality of buildings and cities and, in general, to the environment.

Defining the nature and processes involved in establishing canons is complicated. Yet, their presence is easily demonstrated. The all-encompassing architectural history survey has, in recent times, been the most frequently-used vehicle in the dissemination and perpetuation of canonical frameworks. Their almost inevitable presence in history classes is customary all over the world, providing an apparent semblance of historical education, especially in the difficult context of ever-growing masses of architectural students, hastily taught by a reduced number of sometimes poorly prepared professors.

But despite the fact that they have existed in some form or other since pre-modern times, the general treatise on any given scientific or artistic field is neither a natural nor a neutral thing. It is a device whose aim is to control and dominate the insurmountable vastness of knowledge opened up to Europeans during the “Age of Discovery”, from the late Middle Ages onwards. They emerged in the context of Europe's mercantilist and imperialist efforts to extract or mine all kinds of natural and cultural goods from every culture they encountered. These treatises display the conceited attitude of a “learned” person, located in a supposed geographical or Cartesian center (an axis mundi if you will) a position from which they were entitled to get to know everything by freely, and without any sense of larger responsibility, appropriating the information available to them. Information that they would subsequently process, hierarchize and organize, purging and pasteurizing all the data they randomly received into a “scientific” way of thinking, and dealing with all that knowledge in an almost disembodied way. As a result, we have been educated to believe that “treatises” and “general compendiums” represent the most learned and “civilized” way of dealing with the incommensurable complexities of all aspects of the natural world, humankind included. Thus, it is easy to deem a book that is large enough a bona fide way of understanding everything there is to know about everything. By using them uncritically, we consent to and accept as normal, their ways of reducing the world's cultural knowledge, diversity, and complexity in a fundamentally arrogant way.

Yet, at least for now, it is not necessary to dismiss all treatises. It may be enough to ensure they are used only if preceded by a caveat: the explicit assertion of their limited, contingent, inevitably biased nature, before enjoying their qualities (even their defects, since qualities and defects are probably intertwined). This process begins by critically examining the book and its authors, before reading it, in order to understand its arguments and its distortions. It is important to weigh up the information the book contains, what it excludes and the level of credibility of each piece of information it contains. Every compendium should be compared with other similar ones and their strengths and weaknesses assessed. The geographical distribution of the works and actions it refers to should be explored, and consideration given to whether its title and declared scope agree sufficiently with its actual content.

For example: a book entitled “20^th Century Modern Architecture” implies a universality of geographical scope that few (actually, none) of the existing books on the theme can attain. In the words of the historian Paul Veyne, “historiographies that pretend to be totalizing, mislead their readers about their merchandise” (2014, 34 and 35). Yet, the same book may be useful if a professor is lecturing on modernism in Holland or debating the work of a given European master. Most contemporary all-encompassing books on architectural history would not be so inexact if their titles were changed to reflect their actual contents. The book posited above would be more authentic, perhaps, if it were called “Early 20^th Century Architecture in this or that Specific Geographical Area.” or something like that.

In any case, it is always better to use more than one source, no matter what the subject at hand may be. Comparing the positions of different authors will enhance the critical awareness of professors and students alike. The pedagogical results of such a process would also be greater and more profound and the risk of turning readers into mere believers reduced. In other words, it would help the academic community to appreciate and learn from the stories they tell without turning them into myths. Critical reading of this kind would potentially help pave the way for new possibilities to emerge. Responsible, critically-thinking professors are not meant to educate new generations of architects just so they can recite by heart a single (limited, biased and misleading) supposedly “true” history. The teaching and learning of history should be transformed into a didactic activity based on research (even if that research is only secondary) and driven by curiosity. A process that would require students to revise the canon, complementing it with their own ideas and seeking out their own references.

These recommendations are almost in their entirety the result of common sense, and they are not completely unprecedented. However, they are seldom used in the history of architecture courses, because of lack of time and for other reasons. But things are changing and will undoubtedly do so increasingly in the decades to come.

conclusion

This essay has briefly considered some aspects of canons and the canonization processes in the field of architectural education. It follows the steps already established by earlier authors and by my own previous work. It examines the differences and similarities between the concepts of “scientific paradigm” and “canon”, to better understand the latter's characteristics and to help encourage appropriate ways to question and change them. It also proposes some simple but effective ways to promote gradual changes that might pave the way to a future paradigm shift in the way architecture is taught and the way students learn about it.

The essay does not claim to offer the final word or a definitive solution that could be used to end canonization processes. That is a goal that seems beyond the current realms of possibility and will not be achieved in the short term. In the essay I suggest that we must read these all-encompassing compendiums critically if we are to be able to produce non-canonical architectural history narratives and non-canonical architectural practices are to emerge. Meanwhile, we must deal with the inescapable presence of (old-fashioned) canons supported by (limited) panoramic compendiums. Until this situation changes, the issue at hand is not only to assert the problematic existence of canons but also to propose ways to read them critically and to contribute, as a result, to paving the path toward their obsolescence.

bibliography

1 “[Richard/Ricky] Jay explains that The Prestige is the payoff, the third act of any magic trick. First comes The Pledge: The magician shows you something relatively ordinary, like a dove. Second is The Turn: The magician takes the dove and makes it do something extraordinary, like disappear. Finally, there is The Prestige: The magician tops that disappearance and makes the dove reappear. ‘Magic is all about structure,' Jay said. ‘You've got to take the observer from the ordinary to the extraordinary, to the astounding.'” (Zito, 2018).

2 In our current research project we are working on the possibility of systematically plotting the prevalence of these compendiums around the world, or at least in the architectural libraries of each country's most important universities. Despite being an impossible task to complete in full, we are trying at least to arrive at a rough approximation, beginning with our continent, the Americas, before going on to others.

3 For example. Bonta (1975, 1977); Bozdogan (1999); Gürel and Anthony (2006); Jencks (2001); Lara (2018); Leatherbarrow (2001); Lipstadt (2001); Torrent (2017); Zein (2020).

4 “The term ‘paradigm' enters the preceding pages early, and its manner of entry is intrinsically circular. A paradigm is what the members of a scientific community share, and, conversely, a scientific community consists of men who share a paradigm. Not all circularities are vicious.” (Kuhn, 2021, p. 176).