The Robert Gould Shaw and the Massachusetts 54th Regiment Memorial in Boston (lanida/flickr.com)
It was a remarkable admission to appear under the byline of an architecture critic of the stature of Aaron Betsky, in Architecture Magazine, the mouthpiece of the American Institute of Architects. His piece is called “A Place for Grief and Greed,” and is summed up thusly: “Experiences at the airport demonstrate that we no longer have grand spaces for rituals and significant cultural events that happen in our everyday lives.”
Betsky saw the light, but did he know he saw the light? A key quote:
It was the appearance at such close proximity of these exceptions — these reminders of our mortality and the rituals with which we surround them, as well as the confrontation with plain and simple money — that made the blankness and lack of definition in most of our public spaces all the more obvious.
Betsky was referring to a pair of instances in which the demands of ritual seemed to be slighted – the coming home of a slain warrior and the experience of church seats set up for worship in the public space of a shopping mall. This caused the light bulb to pop up over the critic’s head. But by the end of the piece he seems to have lost any hint that an epiphany had taken place in his mind. Here is what he says toward the end:
The easy answer would be to throw a classicist cloak over everything, squirreling daily life away into the poché while marking and framing important events with columns and colonnades. The opposite of the (rather expensive) traditionalist strategy would be to abstract everything, retreating into complete fluidity, limbo, and loss of meaning. We need something in-between.
But do we really need something in between? Here Betsky’s response is a classic cop-out. Can’t we all just get along? Well, I would ask wouldn’t a return to traditional design, with its innovative evolution continuing into the future, be good enough – indeed, wouldn’t it be (to quote Tony the Tiger) just great! (And I’d challenge his assessment of its expense compared with the likely alternatives.) Please tell me what you think, readers.
Architecture Here and There 
Dave, yes, cat’s out of the bag — it’s me. Beautiful afternoon here, couple a beers, and I’m publicly replying (ritualing) to your post! I guess all architecture is a mask, of sorts, by which governments and other wealthy entities present themselves to the world. They once disguised themselves in ideals (classical motifs, heroic statues, and wisdom etched in bas relief), but now they wear mirrors. The mirrors speak the lie “look, we are you, we are the people” while the ideals said “at least we are trying.”
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I think, Tony, that there is a lot (especially if it is Tony) in what you say. To skip to its end, however, I would argue that there is both a qualitative and quantitative leap in the degree of cynicism in politics, at least, and in business – I don’t know enough to comment on religious hypocrisy these days – over the politicians and the businessmen of yore (by which I mean going back forty or fifty years and more. And there has been a quantum leap in the cynicism of architecture, whether your description of its intentions is sensible or not – and I think it is. For most it is a sin of omission, but not for all, certainly not at the top of the field. I think there is a deconstructivist sensibility at play here, linguistic and worse, that is very far from unintentional. (That was not a typo in your subject line, was it. If it was, then I retract my accusation as to your identity!)
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There are rituals, and then there are traditions. Traditions are filled with rituals — rituals (traditionally) have been a reflection of the traditions of which they are the “life blood” — but traditions, these days, are in hiding. The military, as Betsky noticed, doesn’t want to bring attention to itself when dead warriors come home, so the ritual is left naked in an airport, sans pomp and circumstance. The same might be said for other traditional corporations, like government, which today also keeps a low profile: the money it spends on architecture (museums, stadiums, hospitals, etc.) is not intended to reflect upon itself, but rather upon the people. People today are individuals, proudly struggling through their rituals (like driving through traffic jams) with little or no help from the traditional authorities to guide them, or to make it all make sense to them, to give meaning to their lives — but this is okay, for people are tired of having meaning foisted upon them by “authorities.” At least, they were in the twentieth century, with its fascination with non-traditional public rituals, with festivals, events and celebrations which honor the our right to play, to act out, to be the fool and to occasionally be the hero. Big money — whether governments, churches, or entrepreneurial wealth — celebrates itself, as it always has, by buying beer for the people, a ruse which has always distracted the masses from thinking too much. Now, to my point: modern architects, by playing along, are guilty of the sin of omission. By reflecting no traditions they help disguise the rampant greed and abuse which is destroying humanity and our planet. Yes, I think Betsky glimpsed this — he glimpsed that maybe traditional architecture is more honest — but then it is hard to be honest (and so his epiphany went flat). Here is a question: did traditional architecture, the architecture of pomp and circumstance, keep politicians, religious figures, or business men, more honest?
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