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To mark the publication of 100 Years of Architecture, we asked author Alan Powers to explain his subtly subversive selection of 300 buildings from the early 20th century onwards. While the established modernist narrative can be traced within its pages, a more nuanced depiction of architectural production also emerges, as Powers reveals As Ira Gershwin wrote: ‘The things that you’re liable to read in the Bible, it ain’t necessarily so.’ This could be the motto for 100 Years of Architecture. Historians should be disturbers of the peace, arguing that what you thought was so ain’t necessarily. You could shake this history even harder than I have, but the value of the shaking, it seems to me, is to restore balance by mixing opposites rather than to introduce just another slant. Balance can be as bland as it sounds but I think the sort of excitement that jumps out of a photograph can be overrated, although in making books it is hard not to be seduced by it. The term ‘avant-garde’ is often equated with this sort of excitement, but while it had validity at the beginning of the period, in later times it is usually a self-conscious construct. The situation in architecture today is best represented by hybrid designs that negotiate with many constraints of reality, such as local culture, climate and construction rather than achieving those dubious qualities of ‘uncompromising’ and ‘radical’. While not excluding examples answering to these descriptions, I have made a point of looking for projects that deal directly with social and local issues through the 100-year timespan, with a view to selecting a differently edited past as a retrospective background for the present. I have stuck to the belief that when A and B are seen as opposites, if A is seen as right, B ain’t necessarily wrong. 100 Years of Architecture by Alan Powers is published by Laurence King Publishing |
Words Alan Powers
Image credits: John Henshall/Alamy; Universal Images Group/DeAgostini/Alamy; Bildarchiv Monheim GmbH/Alamy; Arcaid Images/Alamy; M.Flynn/Alamy; LOOK Die Bildagentur der Fotografen GmbH/Alamy; Alan Powers; VIEW Pictures Ltd/Alamy; Hufton+Crow/VIEW/Corbis; Tony Fretton Architects/Peter Cook |
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