An Islamic Reminder of the Sacred in DesignOctober 11, 1998
By HERBERT MUSCHAMP, New York Times
ga Khan: the
name shimmers with glamour. Fabulous wealth. Palatial houses. Racehorses.
Yachts. Jewels.
Royal prerogative. As if that weren't enough, the Aga Khan is also the
most
important figure
in the world of architecture today. In a ceremony at the Alhambra in Spain
last Friday,
Prince Karim Aga Khan honored seven buildings and urban plans, winners
of the 1998
Aga Khan Awards
for Architecture.
Founded in 1977
with the relatively modest aim of raising the standards of modern building
in the
Islamic world,
the awards program has since become far more significant. By focusing the
attention
of Western architects,
planners, historians, critics and the public on new building in the developing
Islamic world,
he has created a dynamic forum for defining architecture's place in the
global culture
emerging in
the wake of the cold war.
Though less well
known than the Pritzker Architecture Prize -- often described as architecture's
Nobel -- the
Aga Khan's awards program has embraced a far broader cultural mission.
Unlike the
Pritzker Prize,
the Aga Khan awards go to projects, not architects.
In addition to
appraising esthetic merit, jurors assess social needs, economic growth,
environmental
impact and the
relationship between local traditions and innovations in contemporary architecture
worldwide.
This year, for
example, the winners include the restoration of Hebron Old Town on the
West Bank,
the design of
a leper hospital in Chopda Taluka, India, a new arts center in Lahore,
Pakistan, and
Tuwaiq Palace,
a recreation center for the diplomatic quarter in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
The range of
projects is typical of those awarded in previous years. They adhere to
no esthetic
school, historical
style or theoretical doctrine. But they do expand ideas on architecture
beyond
Western frames
of reference. And they alter the context in which even Western buildings
should be
appraised.
Above all, the
awards program has created an opportunity for Westerners to reckon with
the
withdrawal of
architecture's spiritural dimension from the public realm.
In his commencement
address at Brown University in 1996, the Aga Khan observed, "For all
Muslims, the
concepts of Din and Dunya, Faith and World, are inextricably linked." At
61, the Aga
Kahn is imam,
or leader, of the Ismaili sect of Shia Muslims, an affluent group of about
13 million
members who
reside mainly in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Kenya, Egypt, the former
Soviet
Republics and
other communities worldwide.
He traces his
descent from Mohammed through Fatima, the Prophet's daughter. A man of
independent
wealth, he also receives tithes from his followers and uses the money to
support public
works in Ismaili
communities.
As imam, the
Aga Khan is responsible for the material as well as the spiritual well-being
of his
followers. Based
at his Secretariat in Chantilly, less than an hour from Paris, the prince
exercises his
authority through
the Aga Khan Development Network, a group of organizations that relies
extensively
on volunteers in Ismaili communities.
The prince's
interest in architecture began with his experience as a dissatisfied client,
frustrated with
the poor quality
of the schools, hospitals, housing and other projects he had commissioned
to serve
Ismaili communities.
Since then, he has also established a program to restore historic cities,
including
buildings in
Cairo, Zanzibar and Samarkand, and funded the study of Islamic architecture
at Harvard
and the University
of Pennsylvania.
I first learned
of the awards in the late 1980s in Mimar, the prince's sumptuously produced
magazine
dedicated to
new buildings and restoration projects in the Islamic world (alas, it has
since ceased
publication).
Another royal,
the Prince of Wales, was then making waves with attacks on modern architecture
that
were little
more than dim appeals to reactionary taste.
Like the British
prince, the Aga Kahn sought to build upon architectural traditions But
his approach
was dramatically
different. Instead of villainizing modernity as the enemy of history, he
grasped that
modernization
is a part of history. He perceived that nothing historically significant
could be achieved
by merely hating
the present.
The British and
the Ismaili prince share one overarching concern: the withdrawal of architecture's
sacred dimension
from the public realm. Architecture is traditionally an art form of the
rich, but it is
also a medium
that since prehistoric times has been used to stake a place for spiritual
values in
everyday life.
As recently as
the late 19th century, the design of ecclesiastical buildings played a
central role in
British architectural
discourse. Today that focus has all but vanished. The extent to which its
disappearance
has made ours a time of mourning is perhaps not fully realized.
I went to Turkey
to look at a small group of projects that have received the Aga Khan Award
for
architecture
over the years. My itinerary included a mosque in Ankara, a reforestation
program
outside the
Turkish capital, a park in Istanbul and a group of vacation houses in the
Aegean resort
town of Bodrum,
under the guidance of Suhah Ascan, an architect who directs the program
from the
Geneva offices
of the Aga Khan Trust for Culture.
Turkey is not,
as a matter of fact, a center of Ismaili life. Since 1922 it has been ruled,
if at times
tenuously, by
a secular government. But, as a country that has long symbolized the threshhold
between East
and West, it is steeped in the cross-cultural spirit that guides the awards
program.
I wanted to look
at buildings outside the superpower frame of reference, to step outside
the
membrane that
has come to enclose much of American architecture within the environment
of
consumer fantasy.
What drew me to the awards program initially was the belief that the end
of the
cold war had
precipitated a crisis for American architecture, urbanism, and those who
write about
these fields.
After World War
II, architects enjoyed substantial moral authority, a reflection of their
simultaneous
commitment to
creative discipline and social responsibility. Much of that authority has
evaporated.
Today, American
architecture often resembles an infernal bubble machine run by evil clowns.
Amusement parks
with swan hotels, Egyptian gambling casinos, pseudo-urban shopping malls,
gated
communities,
pasteboard versions of history with comic book historians to endorse them.
It is as if all
the energy once
exerted to contain Soviet aggression has imploded, enclosing the world's
superpower
within the bubbular
fantasy that a changing world can be understood by dominating it, monitoring
it,
contacting it
through cyberspace.
I'm finding it
hard to focus on the architecture because I can't figure out why Can is
still wearing his
tan loafers.
We're in a mosque, for heaven's sake. I've left my shoes outside, and I'm
not even
Muslim. Is Can
trying to make a statement? Or perhaps the gaffe is mine. Maybe you're
supposed to
wear shoes in
a mosque attached to the Turkish equivalent of our Capitol building: the
legislative
heart of a modern
secular state. Both are reasonable conjectures.
The building
itself makes a political statement. It was deliberately designed to reinforce
the secular
government against
those who would see Turkey ruled by clerical law.
Designed by Behruz
Cinici, in association with his son, the stubbornly shod Can, the concrete
building
is situated
on the secular equivalent of sacred soil. The assembly's 1930s buildings,
in modern
classical style,
embody the political legacy of Ataturk, modern Turkey's founder. Cinici,
a student of
the assembly's
architect, declared he would not design a conventional mosque on Ataturk's
land.
Critics of Mies
van der Rohe's design for the Illinois Institution of Technology campus
once
complained that
you can't distinguish the chapel from the boiler plant. The assembly's
mosque
distances itself
even further from the conventions of sacred architecture. It deliberately
inverts the
elements of
traditional mosque design.
In many mosques,
the entrance is approached through an open arcade that partly screens the
main
facade. Here,
there is nothing but a long row of concrete pedestals -- symbolic bases
of the columns
that the architects
have declined to provide.
Instead of a
dome, the roof mounts in low steps to form an elongated ziggurat. Clerestories
between
the levels admit
light into the prayer hall below. On the right side of the building, where
a minaret
would typically
rise, a set of steps leads up to two platforms, both open to the sky.
The mosque's
most unconventional element is visible from within the prayer hall. Instead
of facing a
solid wall,
kneeling worshipers face a large glass window and, beyond it, a sumptuous,
multilevel
sunken garden
with pools, fountains, trees, a waterfall and a profusion of water plants.
It is a
representation
of paradise, an image of the afterlife to which devout Muslims aspire.
Can Cinici tells
me that for Muslims, life is a threshhold at which we stand, preparing
ourselves
throughout life,
through faith and devotion, for entrance into heaven. The Canicis designed
an
architectural
interpretation of that theshhold. Beyond the garden, one beholds the earth
berm, an
intimation of
death and burial.
I like the threshhold
image, not only as a key to this building's meaning, but as a metaphor
for the
awards program
itself, as a doorway into realms of deeper understanding of the post-cold
war world.
The awards are
presented every three years, after a selection process that is elaborate,
well-financed
and rigorous.
Several hundred nominations are proposed by a network of architects and
critics
throughout the
Islamic world.
An international
master jury meets in Geneva to review the nominees and make an initial
cut. Experts
conduct extensive
field research on the finalists. The jury picks the winners at a second
review in
Geneva six months
later.
The composition
of the master jury changes with each cycle. Over the years, non-Muslims
on the
panel have included
Charles Corea, Peter Eisenman, Frank Gehry, Hans Hollein, Fumihiko Maki,
Charles Moore,
Alvaro Siza, James Stirling, Kenzo Tange and Robert Venturi. Excerpts from
the
jury's deliberations
are published in book form. These are adding up to a permanent record of
the
impact of global
change on the art of creating place.
But why is Can
still wearing his shoes? (Because, I later learned, he was flustered by
showing a
Western journalist
around his building.) Or, why does this building continue to cause anxiety?
Just months before
my trip, last year, the Turkish military intervened to prevent the ruling
party from
mandating religious
education in the nation's public schools. The ground occupied by the mosque,
in
other words,
is contested as well as sacred space. Here, formal invention serves architecture's
unparalleled
power to open the pores to history and meaning.
Since 1961, one
million trees have been planted annually on the hills outside Ankara: pine,
cedar, oak,
poplar, almond
and plum. The 11,000-acre-plus project of the Middle East Technical Institute
has
altered the
city's climate, creating milder winters and summers and helping to decrease
air pollution.
The forest has
also become a haven for abundant life and an oasis for the eyes.
But perhaps the
major impact of the forest has been to limit urban sprawl. Turkish law
forbids the
development
of forest land. Like the mosque's sunken garden, the forest offers a vision
of paradise,
but the delights
here are earthly as well. The forest offers greenery in a desert, a parched
terrain of
banal housing
that spreads outward from Ankara's urban core.
At the Technical
University, classes are conducted in English, campus buildings are designed
in the
Brutalist style
and architectural instruction is derived from the Bauhaus model. It strikes
me that the
reforestation
program lies partly within the tradition of British Arts and Crafts.
Like that movement,
the program is grounded in the values of simplicity, social reform and
truth to
materials; in
rejection of the shoddy and the ornate. Arts and Crafts was more than a
style. No other
movement declared
more emphatically the withdrawal of the religious dimension from the public
sphere.
With it, belief
withdrew into the sanctity of the home, the privacy of what we now call
life style. It is
heartening to
see that tradition revived on the urban scale of collective expression.
The Mausoleum
at Halicarnassus, one of the Seven Wonders of the World, is now a big pit
in the
back streets
of Bodrum, a hip resort town on the Aegean coast. In the early 15th century,
Crusaders
pillaged the
Mausoleum, quarrying it for stone to build the Castle of St. John, a fortress
that still
stands on a
mole in the harbor. But enough rubble was left lying around in the 19th
century to
construct two
small stone houses built on the waterfront. These are now the property
of the record
producer Ahmet
Ertegun and his wife Mica, who remodeled the buildings in 1973 with the
architect
Turgut Cansever.
On the ground
floor, the rooms are cool and white, with high ceilings and floors strewn
with blue and
white striped
cushions. The bedrooms, lodged in a newer annex, are more richly decorated.
The old buildings
and the new enclose a garden of enchantment. It covers a small area, but
tall trees
are mingled
with short ones and the foliage bursts out at eye level, creating an effect
at once infinite
and intimate.
Mausoleus was a tyrant, and the Crusaders were terrorists. It's a joy to
see these
ancient stones
recycled into a house rebuilt by jazz.
After an afternoon
in this garden, it comes as a letdown to visit another award-winning project,
the
Demir Holiday
Village, also designed by Turgut Cansever. Like Seaside in Florida, this
resort offers
itself as a
model for urban development. And like the reforestation program, it was
designed to limit
sprawl.
In two decades,
Bodrum has gone through a San Tropez-style transformation, from fishing
village and
hippie colony
to a booming resort that makes South Beach look sleepy. The hills surrounding
the
harbor bristle
with stumpy white apartment buildings of no distinction.
By contrast,
the holiday village is compact, its houses unified by stone walls, terraces
and stairs that
organize the
dwellings in a staggered arrangement on the hillside site. It's a rustic
Habitat, Acapulco
on Alka-Seltzer.
If you care about
architecture, this is the sort of project you're supposed to admire. But
the rooms in
the houses are
minuscule, the sun is gone from the water in the afternoon, and the entire
complex is
so tight and
repressed that you want to blare a transistor radio and race back to the
sprawl. Why
bother with
Bodrum if you want to be square? I'm glad to see that Turkey has bubbles
too.
Completed in
1856, Dolmabahce Palace is the superbubble of a burnt-out superpower, the
last seat of
the Ottoman
rulers before the sultanate was dissolved in 1922. An imperial palace can
feel like a
desert, too.
The grandiosity of this European-style palace is more oppressive than Death
Valley.
It is one gigantic
package of everything that Arts and Crafts designers rebelled against,
25-ton crystal
chandeliers,
bear skin rugs (gifts from the Czar), diamond-encrusted demitasse cups,
gilded moldings,
red brocade.
Just climbing the Crystal Staircase, with its Baccarat balustrade, can
induce reverse
vertigo: you
fear you won't make it to the top.
This is the center
of an empire rapidly devolving into the so-called Sick Man of Europe, a
nation
whose assets
and interests were dominated by businessmen and politicians of the major
European
powers.
But the Aga Khan
Award wasn't presented to this project for interior decoration. Rather,
the award
honored the
restoration of the palace gardens and the decision to open them to the
public. Istanbul is
not rich in
parks, and this is a fine one.
The palace stands
at the mouth of the Bosphorus. An esplanade, with five water gates, is
one of
world's great
river walks. Among Istanbul's public spaces, I prefer the square between
the Hagia
Sophia and the
Blue Mosque, where people come to sit on benches and contemplate great
buildings.
But, for a native
of the eastern United States, it is a thrilling reversal to gaze westward
across water
toward the European
shore.
"One can't write
directly about the soul," Virginia Woolf states in her diary. "Looked at,
it vanishes.
But look at
the ceiling, at the cheaper beasts in the Zoo which are exposed to walkers
in Regents
Park, and the
soul slips in."
On the way back
to New York, I stop off in Paris to pay my respects to the Aga Khan in
Chantilly.
It also happens
that the one Western building to receive an Aga Khan award is in a Left
Bank
riverside location
at the foot of the Boulevard Saint Germain. Jean Nouvel is an architect
I greatly
admire, but
I've never been a fan of his Arab World Institute. Each time I enter this
visually cool,
gunmetal gray
building, the body temperature drops.
But the institute's
lozenge shape makes good use of its site, and the views from its rooftop
restaurant
outclass those
from the Tour d'Argent. And the building makes a historical point. Its
most noted
feature is a
south-facing sunscreen wall made up of hundreds of light-sensitive irises,
which was
designed to
control the light entering the building.
Arranged in blocks
fitted into a grid, the irises form patterns resembling arabesques: a reminder
that
Western technology
arose from the genius of Islamic mathematicians. We've taken that inspiration
in
more than one
direction. The irises stopped working within weeks of the building's opening,
but we
still love the
image of science even when appliances break down. And, to me, Nouvel's
arctic
architecture
is a fine thermal symbol of the chilly rationalist philosophy for which
Paris was long the
supreme urban
center.
I feel as if
I've been traveling around inside one of architecture's most interesting
minds, but the Aga
Khan's Chantilly
compound feels oddly bland. The road winds through a lovely, leafy park.
Stables to
the right; the
prince's house to the right; the secretariat just ahead, the latter blonde
in effect. Tawny
limestone walls;
floors of honey-colored marble; ecru carpeting; brass accents. Only the
small foyer
to the prince's
office, encrusted with a collection of mineral crystals, gives an Oriental
impression.
Inside, chairs
and sofas are upholstered in blue and white.
I came here to
run two ideas by the prince. Can he confirm my impression that his interest
in
architecture
stems from that art's capacity to unite spirit and matter in the landscape
of everyday
life? Yes, he
answered, his eyes lighting up, as if to suggest that no point is more
fundamental to his
thinking.
And what about
using the threshhold as a metaphor for this story? This idea he rejected.
It evoked
for him images
of conquest, of crossing a border with the intention of colonizing the
territory on the
other side.
The threshhold also implies terrain left behind -- epochs, values, roots.
Neither image fits
the prince's
mission. His aim, rather, has been to create a meeting ground for cultural
exchange.
Some critics
have said that the buildings commissioned by the Aga Kahn are still not
up the level of
the projects
honored by his awards. Others have wondered whether the money it takes
to run the
program might
not be better spent on actual buildings. Both criticisms miss the point.
The aim of the
awards program
is to construct a world view, and this is priceless.
With a morning
plane to catch, I had no time to pretend that I was actually visiting Paris.
But before
turning in I
decided to walk down to the Seine and see its banks bathed in the harsh
glare of the
bateaux mouches.
There, I encountered something unexpected: an impromptu memorial to Princess
Diana, sculptured
from thousands of letters, cards, flowers and photographs.
These were massed
around the base of the replica of Liberty's torch that stands on the quai
at the
bottom of the
Avenue George V. Visitors replenish offerings there to this day.
The princess
had died the night before I left New York for Turkey, and since I'd been
out of touch
with the news,
I hadn't heard about the cascades of grief generated by her death. Surprising,
too, was
the volume of
cards and letters written in Arabic script. "Pour Diana, Reine d'Islam,"
one large
placard read.
Like the princess's
death, the site of the memorial was an accident of fate; the torch stands
at the
entrance to
the Alma Tunnel, where the car in which Diana was riding spun out of control
and
crashed. But
I thought it paradoxically apt that this public expression of grief was
clustered around
this golden
symbol of liberty, of French Enlightenment values and their passage to
the United States.
Those values
included religious freedom, and even the right to be free of religion in
the public sphere.
This is a cherished
principle of modern democracy, an idea to be defended with vigor. Yet it
seemed
to me that more
than a princess was being mourned here. Our separation of Faith from World
has
also left a
void, fleetingly filled by this collective floral tribute
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