Definition of music

 Western classical music is an ambiguous art form because it is a kind of psychology in sound through fluid mathematics.

A new humanist environment

Recently, the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, published an article about a new initiative of the EU concerning urban planning, as a part of the European Green Deal which intends to turn Europe into the first climate-neutral continent in 2050. The article, which was published internationally in the European media, can also be found on the website of the European Commission:

https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/AC_20_1916

The article is about urban planning and also about architecture as such: ‘The European Green Deal must also – and especially – be a new cultural project for Europe’. Von der Leyen discusses the need of a movement in building that combines sustainability, accessibility and aesthetics, so that new built environments will not only be ‘green’ but also ’attractive, and innovative and human-centered’. She refers to the Bauhaus movement which, in the twenties of the last century, started an entirely new way of thinking about how the human environment should be created, breaking with an ages-long architectural tradition and introducing new concepts in terms of practicality, function and aesthetics. With the Bauhaus we find the beginning of the ‘box style’ square building tradition, using new materials like cement, glass and steel, and applying an aesthetic which refers to technology and utopian fantasies. It is the vision of a world where proportions and scale are determined by the mass of populations and requirements of dense traffic networks, more often than not leading to the square blocks to house populations as if they were farm animals: the notorious ‘Selbstverkistung der Menschheit’. Von der Leyen hopes that the European Green Deal will start a ’new Bauhaus movement‘ which will combine all the needs of modern humanity, including the psychological/aesthetic needs.

Considering aesthetics, the example of the Bauhaus seems to be a rather unhappy one: after the confused proliferation of building styles in the 19th century, the Bauhaus idea seemed to ‘clean the shop’ and to start from a clean slate, where functionality took priority. The term ‘function’ became the widely-accepted catchword for the new building style, where ‘function’ was understood as an entirely practical and material category. The big mistake of Bauhaus and everything that followed in its wake was, of course, to think that function could only be applied to the material presence of a building, as if psychology and aesthetics were not truly functional. The condemnations of 19C projects like the Viennese Ringstrasse, which is a conglomeration of historic fantasies for contemporary occupation, and styled with aesthetic symbolism, have accompanied the development of Selbstverkistung since the twenties, defending ‘the only possible future’ against its ‘conservative’ critics.

 

 The Viennese Ringstrasse

The human environment created in material terms has to combine both material and psychological functions, and the latter include aesthetics. But the ‘modern’ city centres of today, be them in Tokyo, Mumbai, Houston, Frankfurt, Singapore or Dubai all look the same: faceless utopias in glass and steel, disconnected from locality and character, and suggesting a world where some essential qualities of the human sensibility have been happily left behind, and dedicated to a future where technologies will have replaced human considerations.

The Bauhaus aesthetics were modern at the time, and are still considered – by many people – as modern today, in spite of them being a hundred years old. But they gave birth to a movement in architecture and urban planning which was thoroughly ideological: modernism. The term ‘modern’ is a historic category, merely saying that something or someone is of ‘now’, and does not define any qualities. But the concept of ‘modernism’ is a collection of ideas which claim exclusive relevance for ‘the modern world’: the industrial society as it gradually emerged since the industrial revolution in the 19th century and took off with great momentum after 1945. Modernism broke with the experience of ages of building and town planning, with traditional aesthetics, with the psychology related to perception of beauty and practicality, and introduced new materials (cement, glass, steel etc.), new production methods, and new notions of space, and an aesthetic which centred itself around the notion of material and practical function (‘form follows function’). Under the pressure of demographic developments, new economies and globalization, it became the ‘only acceptable‘ way of building and urban planning, and we thank to that totalitarian idea the ravages we see all over the world and one of the sources of the serious problems the planet now finds itself in.

So, the idea of the Bauhaus may not be the best example to follow now that we are in the midst of many problems that the Bauhaus movement created in the first place. It goes without saying that the European Green Deal, and the initiative of a ‘new cultural project’ as launched by the European Commission, is a very laudible one. The built environment is of the greatest importance for a much needed reform, the contours of which now appear with stringent urgency before our postcovid eyes. No doubt there will be components of the modernist experience of the last 100 years that can be used constructively for the future, but its central ideas, its ideology and its utopian and totalitarian character is something to discard and to replace by a very different way of thinking. Is there a concrete alternative to modernism and all the mistakes that followed in the wake of the Bauhaus movement? Indeed there is, and it is surprising that Mrs von der Leyen does not seem to be aware of it: the well-known and successful movement of ‘new urbanism’ which emerged in the USA in the eighties, with the inspiring architect and visionary theoretician Léon Krier, and which got a sister movement in Europe, the European Urban Renaissance:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Urban_Renaissance

This movement combines modern practicality and solutions of contemporary problems with an aesthetic that has its roots in the territory that has been the only and grave taboo in the otherwise ‘entirely free’ realm of modernist thought: the experience, practical and aesthetic, of many ages of building the human environment…. said differently: tradition. The modernist break with ages of experience suggested that man had become a different species, with its back to an unhappy past and its face towards an enlightened future, an utopia of streamlined willpower and material progress. Alas, man has a great number of inborn characteristics which cannot be amputated without causing serious damage, and the rejection of ages of experience proves to be one of the greatest mistakes ever made by mankind.

As an example of this new urbanist and humanist thinking, there is an impressive design for the rebuilding of a rundown quarter in Rome, created by Krier and some of his collegues: Tor bella Monaca. This groundbreaking, forward-looking design answers all the requirements of the building environment in the 21st century, including the necessary requirements of a way of building where the natural environment is being respected and is part of the planning. The most spectacular aspect of the plan is that its aesthetics have their roots in the past, but translate them anew, thereby creating a deep resonance of humanity and identity with the people who would eventually live in that environment:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyNmj-hQVg4

The spirit of this plan was far, far ahead of its time, and has therefore been rejected, but has become ever more urgent today.