Architecture can provoke deep unease and even revulsion. Why? What fundamental chords are being triggered?
One may interpret – in a reductive way – a number of architectural movements as deliberate rejections of preceding orders. The Gothic was a rejection of the Romanesque and the classical a revival of ancient orders to replace the Gothic. The Neo-Gothic architecture of the Georgian and Victorian ages was a repudiation of the hegemony of Classicism, typified by the Palladianism. Art Nouveau may be the most categorical assertion of abnormal architectural values: the organic over the artificial, the fluid over the stable, the exaggerated curve over the geometrical curve, the asymmetrical over the symmetrical, its extravagant verticality and excessive detail. Art Nouveau represents the triumph of the illogical and irrational and a defiance of liberalist materialist progressivism (as found in linear conceptions of stylistic evolution), albeit through its own liberalist creed: breaking rather than developing tradition, prioritising originality, playfulness and perversity. In that respect, Art Nouveau is the prime medium of horror in architecture.
Are buildings deliberately made to unsettle? Well, certain buildings definitely are. The architecture of Daniel Libeskind in his Jewish Museum (2001) is intentionally unsettling, meant to make us experience a feeling of dislocation equivalent to that of the Jewish diaspora, as seen by Libeskind. Architecture that flaunts the established norms – as typified by Art Nouveau’s provocation – can be a strategy to assert new values or simply as a fashion to which ambitious architects (and patrons) wish to attach themselves. Sometimes absurdity is involuntary and the product of mismatching abilities, capacities, systems and expectations. It can be accidental.
Joshua Comaroff and Ong Ker-Shing (in Horror in Architecture: The Reanimated Edition, 2023, University of Minnesota Press) describe horror as a means of conveying the sublime, which confounds reason and elicits in the subject a feeling of wonder and fear. They go on to observe that horror is nowadays discredited and low status, the province of pulp fiction and formulaic films, and no longer considered a means of powerful expression but rather one of titillation driven by commercial imperatives.
Body horror is a good analogy to our responses to deviant architecture. Our sense of normality is determined by our understanding of reality as conditioned by the bodies we see around us. Deviation from the norm induces horror and pity, in that order. Any deviation is antithetical to normalcy. (For a greater insight into this concept, it is worth reading John Wyndham’s novel The Chrysalids, which depicts a society founded on a purity doctrine based on an elevated sense of normalcy and purity.) The book addresses causes of architectural transgression including doubles, exquisite corpses (the hybrid), partial vacancy, reflexivity, incontinent objects, homunculism and gigantism, distortion and disproportion, blobs and other topics.
The authors point out that some early inadvertent monstrosities were the product of classically trained architects struggling to confront the inherent expectations of the commissioners of modern high-rise construction. The morphology of the beaux-arts did not work well when transferred to the outsize structures of the American commercial renaissance of c. 1840-1929, which demanded that they be inflated or repeated to excess, comprising distorted hybrids injured by a contradiction between size and style. Grandstands for new, large sporting venues were made by enlarging clubhouse designs, with the new sizes defying the modest and fitting characteristics of the original. Solon S. Beman’s Pullman Building, Chicago (1884) featured a proliferation of varied and ornate chimneys and windows that became inappropriate when applied to a very large building, giving it an uncanny quality. I find that personally appealing, even though I know it violates good taste.
Doubled structures (for example, twin towers) sometimes provide peculiar qualities of bifurcation and redundancy, which are sometimes are counteracted by placement or variation that introduces necessary divergence between the components. Otherwise, the sense of doubling has the aura of twins or doppelgangers, which can induce unease. Too great a degree of deviation, especially in attached structures (the British semi-detached house) takes on the air of the hypertrophied or strangely mutated, when one half becomes too distinct from its pair. It has a precedent in literature, as found in Poe, Gogol and Dostoevsky. The authors raise the example of cinema doppelgangers that present a threat or are considered aberrant – especially when it is a sentient growth, such an emergent, parasitic being with distorted characteristics of the original (see How to Get Ahead in Advertising (1989) and Army of Darkness (1992)).
The collage aesthetic of Modernism encouraged architects to break from the idea of a homogenous morphology with buildings that juxtaposed contrasting styles and traditions. This is compared to Mary Shelley’s monster of Frankenstein and the Surrealist exquisite corpse. The 1980s designs of Frank Gehry are given as examples of a Post-Modernist collage architectural aesthetic that is “in no sense ironizing or twee; rather, it appears genuine and admiring of context”.[i] Interestingly, the designs that are seen to be free of restraint and decorum are considered “gay” and “libertarian”. The extravagance of knowingly juxtaposing clashing idioms has become adjacent to camp, as an affront to tastefulness.
The partially dead is a manifestation of horror through architecture. The building that is partially empty, stripped or merely unoccupied presents a troubling clash between the healthy and the dead. For example, the shopping centre with deserted wings and boarded-up deserted shops within a city centre bring a sense of metaphysical discomfort, quite detached from fears regarding crime, urban blight and commercial depreciation. The partially defunct complex or building becomes stained by the evidence of eminent mortality. Empty units at a shopping mall are redolent of the failure of departed businesses. Ghost areas can come into existence as property managers strip flooring from unoccupied units to make them commercially non-viable and therefore not subject to taxation.
Biomorphism of the built is a horrific aberration. In Zaha Hadid Architects’ hotel in Graz (2020) windows “jut from the façade to varying degrees and appear to “look” in different directions. This intentional biomorphism is undoubtedly horrifying, particularly in contrast to the conservative facades of the UNESCO World Heritage Site where the boardinghouse sits.”[ii] The uncanny and perverse are intention when a building starts to mimic living things. This is slightly apparent in the rounded flowing forms of early modernism and considerably more apparent in the termite-excreta of Gaudi’s La Sagrada Familia church, Barcelona (1882). It was itself influenced by the petrological and the earliest works of Art Nouveau. The building that echoes the ship or the monument is imitative but it does not possess the characteristics of a living thing, such as the “scales” of Selfridges Building, Birmingham (2003) or the “eye stalks” of Kunsthaus Graz (2000), which ape the animalistic.
The aversion to the internal service aspects of buildings being made visible in an unseemly way prompted criticisms of Richard Roger’s buildings, such as Centre Pompidou, Paris (1977) and Lloyd’s, London (1978-86). In these buildings, service elements such as support structures, air conditioning and heating ducting, water (supply, drainage and soil) are all placed outside the superstructure, reversing the usual order. Seen as messy, unclean, ugly and transgressive, this style of design reimagines what is normal. The reactions against it are not mainly aesthetic or practical but an instinctive aversion to seeing the “internal organs” of a building as we likewise feel regarding human and animal anatomies. That which is normally hidden seems proper to remain hidden and exposure of these parts is synonymous with injury, trauma, dismemberment and consumption. The animal born with its internal organs visible is doomed to die a quick death. Aside from martial cultures, the sight of man’s internal organs (until the very recent advances of sterile surgery) portended his imminent death and occasioned revulsion and pity.
“Accidental incontinence” of buildings is evident in unplanned, low-cost and utilitarian buildings, such as the slums of Asia and rudimentary agricultural workshops, with external ramps, pipes and struts added. These are signs of deficiency in materials, money and foresight. Additions sometimes display flaws in the original design, occasioning unavoidable modifications in order to make a structure safe or effective. Understanding this, causes us to treat the displays of internality as suboptimal. A disrupted architectural structure is considered first and foremost as indicative of dysfunction or demolition rather than being treated (intellectually, neutrally) as a conscious aesthetic stance. A natural desire to see delicate components protected within a shell makes us uneasy about the exposure of these parts.
The most subtle cause of unease that the authors discuss is the Trojan Horse. That is, the building that includes are large amount of empty space not part of the functional part. This may because the outside shape may be made to satisfy non-functional requirements (conforming to neighbouring building sizes or styles) or because the functional space inside needs protection or supplementary non-accessible space (the area used to store scenery and its machinery in an opera house, for example). “A technical medium of structure and services insulates the inhabitable volumes from the outside.”[iii] This is (a little tenuously) stretched to include interiors that contradict the style of the rest of the building, such the adoption of a different style or an attempt to isolate the inhabitant from the exterior world in a way that disorientates or misleads. An example given is a smoking room of Frank Furness (1839-1912), which he designed to appear like a fur trapper’s log cabin, despite in being a room in his suburban home. This could be seen as dishonesty, not dissimilar to the intellectually-excused deception of Post-Modernism. (A jibe here about “post-truth” being a product of “right-wing populism”[iv] is rather poorly aimed.)
The examples of gigantism are mainly unrealised proposals, such as Iofan’s Palace of the Soviets, Moscow (1937) and the fantasies of Piranesi, but could have included the Brussels Palais de Justice, Brussels (1866-83). These are often proportionately unremarkable, simply vastly oversized. The oppressive presence of the mass – opposite of the hollow architectural form – intrudes when we consider cave dwellings and buildings attached to cliffs and boulders. In the case of the former, the fear of rockfall does not fully account for our disquiet. In the case of St-Gildas Chapel, Brittany (C16th) this is relative, with the building situated under an outcrop of rock, with forms part of the interior. It is much more pronounced in the overhanging cliff over Sentinel de las Bodegas, which presents a dramatic spectacle of buildings cut under naturally eroded rock parapets.
Inadvertent distortion (church spire, Chesterfield (medieval)) is compared to deliberate distortion made by Gehry and others. This is prime example of the gameplaying of Post-Modernists. Expressionism is another generator of misshapen structures, not much covered here. The breadth of the topics and the relative shortness of this book mean that a lot goes undiscussed. It is not obvious how much the reader is assumed to know already or whether there are gaps the discourse that arise through the authors having to cover too much ground.
I find many of the buildings here wonderful. I admire the creativity and energy, even if I have doubts about living in or near them. There are also political implications of being too accepting, addressed below. However, I do find myself in sympathy when the buildings are modest and isolated. Most large buildings are centrally located and assertive, disrupting the existing environment and confronting the local population.
The blob as a low-energy, entropic monstrosity is the demonstration of the idea of the informe as an avatar eliciting quasi-religious revulsion felt in the face of the unformed and unidentifiable, as posited by Georges Bataille. I disagree with Comaroff and Ker-Shing that the proposition of the intentional ruin is a manifestation of the horrific. I am not sure if the unintentional recent ruin can count as horrific – a subject for a future article, perhaps.
The authors view the proliferation of instances of horror in architecture as a sign of resistance to the state of “late capital”. The playful, inefficient gaps (“unnerving and wasteful aporia”[v]) that can be found in Post-Modernist buildings are a sign of a repudiation against pure functionalism, state-socialist planning and rational exploitation engendered by capitalism. The authors quote intriguing ideas of Pierre Bourdieu and Moishe Postone, discussing architecture as something appraised as beyond function and commodity, with a presence that defies human determination. This is perhaps because most buildings are beyond the capacity of the average man to build or even (as in the case of complex buildings) comprehend. The apparent permanence of buildings must also play into this special treatment of buildings.
In their postscript, Comaroff and Ker-Shing devoutly hope for an “authentically transgressive” architecture that will make conventional citizens, mired in late capital, discomforted. “An abject, insurgent architecture must constantly violate the limits of the episteme[.]”[vi] The political function of horror in architecture (“the disobedient building”[vii]) is to reify the abnormal. “[T]he unique character of horror is increasingly relevant in what we might call an “age of affect,” within an emergent politics of the sublime that poses the ecstatic and the shocking as alternatives to older Enlightenment values. Horror is important because – as an intellectual-affective tradition and a sphere of cultural production – it is effective queering the norms of design practice. Horrid buildings deserve consideration because their violence is productive. […] Their deviant physicality opposes […] assumptions of objectivity and realism that mask the worrying order of things.”[viii]
The rise in active subversion “makes for interesting buildings”.[ix] So it does, but one cannot help wondering about the cumulative effect of such undermining of conventions, not only architectural but socio-political. When rules are broken, values and tastes shift, not always for the better. Perhaps the drive to overturn is found in the envy of lesser men directed towards the pantheon of greats they grew up beneath. It is resentment of the inadequate modern generation given an enviable legacy and a situation of relative comfort, who have nothing left to achieve in artistic terms and so turn to destruction and degradation. Esteem for novelty in itself is the sure road not to abundance of achievement but to nihilism. By judging architecture is Marxist terms, the authors fail to acknowledge the role of psychology and man’s essential nature, unfortunately. Such is the fate of much social studies.
Ultimately, whatever the economic and political motivations are – and they clearly come into play in any collaborative and multi-partner project such as a substantial building – their are personal factors in play. If one is driven by a sense of perversity and power and the occasion arises to put into effect, then this finds a way out. It is economic and political factors that determine if partners and finance is put in place to support that expression. If a society sanctions buildings that defy the norm then this is a reflection of the wider cultivation of heterogeneity, multi-culturalism and so forth. If we are too rigid in our rejection of the new, aren’t we dooming ourselves to a future of repetition that will ossify into a straitjacket of convention?
Regardless of one’s responses, more “horror through abnormality” is on its way in Western architecture.
NB: This article was reshaped and republished on 20 May 2024.
[i] Comaroff & Ker-Shing, 2023, p. 55
[ii] P. 85
[iii] P. 103
[iv] P. 112
[v] P. 207
[vi] P. 213
[vii] P. 213
[viii] 1-2pp
[ix] P. 213
