Walls are products of our minds, and incarcerate us. They soak up our lives, and give
back
blankness. They make for us extra 'skulls' in which to hide, and cells to shut things away. We
depend on them, and yet resent our dependency. We see them as barriers to freedom and
communality, but at the same time realise that those same barriers help us keep peace and
sanity. Walls may aggravate our claustrophobic instincts, but they also comfort our innate
agoraphobia. They have two sides to them, literally and metaphorically.
The wall is sometimes seen as the blank canvas of architecture, a surface onto which
'architecture'
is applied. But it is much more than that. The wall itself is one of the most powerful instruments
available to an architect. By the arrangement of walls the architect sets out the spatial matrices
within which our lives are lived.
Social cohesion is really about walls as instruments of the minds of those who dispose
and
arrange them. It is about what walls can be used to do: how they interplay with the ways space, on
the surface of the earth and under the sky, is occupied; how they contribute to and affect lived
experience; how they help in orientation and the management of the world around.
Walls are agents and symbolic manifestations of the order, and the conflicts, of life
in the world. In
Nazareth, in 1999, the Muslim community decided to build a mosque alongside the Christian
Basilica of the Annunciation. It seems to have been a political as well as a religious gesture, which
upset the Christian community in the town and provoked unrest. Before work properly started on
the building the Muslims took possession of the place, occupying it as if the mosque was already
there. They marked out a square with curbstones, oriented to Mecca. Inside were carpets, outside
was the tarmac of the car park site, with neat lines of shoes. The Muslims used this square of
carpets as the mosque. On hot days it was shaded with cloth. Worshippers washed their feet and
hands in nearby water troughs. The mihrab, the symbolic doorway to Mecca, was marked with
a
white plastic garden chair. Steps formed the minbar, the 'pulpit'. And the minaret from
which the
muezzin called the faithful to prayer was a scaffolding pole with loudspeakers attached. With
all
this in place the mosque already existed, but without a building. The essential elements of its
architecture were there..., complete with the illusion of 'walls' psychologically as strong as any built
barriers, but through which the statement of worship, and symbolic possession of place, could be
displayed to the world.
This illustrates that walls are used by the designing mind to impose its intellectual
structures on
the world. They are ubiquitous structures that influence and affect our experience of the world
starting from the layout of walls in the abstraction of conventional architectural drawing.
Walls are primarily a surface to articulate our primitive and psychological relationship
with
boundaries as surfaces between space we can occupy and solid that we cannot. Here we may
speculate on the invention of some basic types of wall that have emerged in the occupation of
caves, for example, the retaining wall, the partition wall, and the enclosing wall and notes some of
the things they enable architects to do. These social interactions led to roles played by walls in
making artificial caves, and the emergence of related spatial geometries.
A consequence of the emergence of the artificial cave from its subterranean state,
resulted in the
exposing the outside surfaces of walls as screens for display, and allowing the manipulation of
natural light in internal spaces. There are many ways in which walls can be expressive: of location,
tradition, culture, identity, status, imagination, aspiration, knowledge, sophistication, skill,
resources... even philosophy, and a sense of humour. In particular, there are many examples
through the ages illustrating the different things walled enclosures have been used to do:
concealment, protection, containment, orientation....
An important social role of walls is to prevent and channel movement, and to manipulate
serial
experience, as well as the ways they can enhance legibility by providing datums in built labyrinths
to help people keep track of where they are.
Architects exploit the zone within walls, between 'inside' and 'outside'. In this
connection they have
tried to obscure the presence of walls, and ways they have created inhabited walls and modified
walls to make them more functional in terms of the social requirements to control sound, heat and
light.
In all of the above senses, architecture is a 'bridge' between minds. At one level
architects organise
places for others to use; they construct the social frames of people's lives. At another level, they
indulge in communication with each other through their work, challenging competitors, impressing
critics, and paying homage to those who have influenced them as they go. Both levels constitute
the vitality walls as day to day agents of social cohesion and architects are important managers of
space as an increasingly limiting resource.
This has been recognised by the UIA/UNESCO Charter for Architectural Education, which
states:
"We, the architects, concerned by the future development of architecture in a
fast changing world,
believe that everything, influencing the way in which the built environment is made, used, furnished,
landscaped and maintained, belongs to the domain of the architects. We, being responsible for the
improvement of the education of future architects to enable them to work for a sustainable
development in every cultural heritage, declare:
- That the new era will bring with
it grave and complex challenges with respect to social and
functional degradation of many human settlements, characterized by a shortage of housing
and urban services for millions of inhabitants and by the increasing exclusion of the
designer from projects with a social content.
This makes it essential
for projects and research conducted in academic institutions to
formulate new solutions for the present and the future.
- That architecture, the quality of
buildings, the way they relate to their surroundings, the
respect for the natural and built environment as well as the collective and individual cultural
heritage are matters of public concern.
- That there is, consequently, public
interest to ensure that architects are able to
understand and to give practical expression to the needs of individuals, social groups and
communities, regarding spatial planning, design organization, construction of buildings as
well as conservation and enhancement of the built heritage, the protection of the natural
balance and rational utilization of available resources.
- That methods of education and training
for architects are very varied; this constitutes a
cultural richness which should be preserved.
- That, nevertheless, it is prudent
to provide a common ground for future action, not only in
the pedagogical methods used, but also with the aim of achieving an appropriate elevated
level, by establishing criteria which permit countries, schools and professional
organizations to evaluate and improve the education given to the future architects.
- That the increasing mobility of architects
between the different countries calls for a mutual
recognition or validation of individual diplomas, certificates and other evidence of formal
qualification.
- That the mutual recognition of diplomas,
certificates or other evidence of formal
qualification to practise in the field of architecture has to be founded in objective criteria,
guaranteeing that holders of such qualifications have received and maintain the kind of
training called for in this charter.
- That the vision of the future world,
cultivated in architectural schools, should include the
following goals:
a decent quality
of life for all the inhabitants of human settlements;
a technological
application which respects the social, cultural and aesthetic needs of
people;
an ecologically
balanced and sustainable development of the built environment;
an architecture
which is valued as the property and responsibility of everyone".
