Like people, and with few exceptions, a beautiful building will have a beautiful face. Of course, this doesn’t mean a building should look anything like a person. In fact, it’s a bit unsettling when one does. Rather, a facade emerges from its many parts almost as if by magic, providing a singular expression to the world around it. And like a person’s face, we somehow feel that we can peer into it and sense the meaning it holds.
Sadly today, many architects put little effort into designing facades that please the general public. Instead, they typically employ minimalist styles rooted in function or economy—looks that often fail to provide a face altogether and are typically at odds with the wishes of most communities.1 While there are those who may doubt the importance of external formalities, it remains true that buildings are experienced by more people on their outside than within them. And as with anything in the environment, the look of these buildings can either raise or lower our spirits.
To that end, everyone would benefit from more beauty in contemporary architecture. Though reviving the design culture required to achieve this would be a difficult challenge, it certainly is not a hopeless one.
Builders, of course, have not always neglected the outside faces of their work. In fact, many ancient structures, like the Mayan temples of Mesoamerica, had hardly any interior space at all—their focus was almost completely outward. Even as structural advancements like the arch and dome brought the world new kinds of wondrous enclosed spaces, facade design remained fundamental up until the present age. That’s why it’s so easy to admire buildings like Chartres Cathedral just as much for their iconic facades as for their spectacular interiors.
But the modernist movement of the 20th-century introduced a new paradigm: form follows function, and with it came emphasis on interior organization and the removal of ornament. As a consequence, it’s not uncommon for even the front door of a new building to be hard to find.
THE FACE AS WINDOW TO THE SOUL
When it comes to the significance of a building’s facade, the metaphor of the face is an apt one. This human feature is by far the most critical for communicating our individuality to one another. The eyes, lips, mouth, and even the unique act of blushing provide key information to observers, and in their aggregate they allow us to perceive the being of the person in our presence, reassuring us that we are not alone.
How true it is, then, that we can read each other with our eyes. For example, a child racked with guilt will struggle to meet the disappointed look on their parent’s face. Likewise, a woman will have no difficulty discerning between an innocent glance and a man’s objectifying gaze, a look which often fails to reach the eyes altogether in its thinly-veiled appraisal of body parts.
In truth, a man’s leering stare is a fair analogy for architecture. It demonstrates what such eyes are really in search of: utility. In the case of the cat-caller, gratification comes only after reducing women to their mere form for the purpose of vulgar subjugation. Developers often act in a similar way towards buildings, avoiding the difficult work of genuine home design so that mass-produced “units” can be sold for quick financial gain. In both cases the specifics are unimportant: one condo is just as exchangeable for the next, as is one body for another.
DEFACEMENT
The desire to avoid the responsibilities of mutual recognition is one of our greatest temptations, and accepting this fallacy gives unwarranted license to exploit the environment and the people around us. As a moral workaround, people often attempt to rid objects of their subjective character by defacing them. As a very literal example, surely one of the reasons for blindfolding a person at their execution is to conceal their humanity from those who witness the act. Meanwhile, modern technology has radically magnified this impulse. Instead of confronting an enemy in battle, now a soldier need only program a missile towards faceless victims. How efficient and horrible.
It’s no wonder, then, that we regularly deface buildings, not only through war and petty graffiti, but also by design. That’s because a building with no face is one that we feel at ease consuming: constructing cheaply, occupying with little upkeep, and ultimately disposing of to make way for something more useful or profitable. As a consequence of this faceless form of capitalism, China’s landscape is now littered with empty and half-finished towers, erected purely to serve as repositories for excess savings.
Many architects are more than willing to design accordingly, convinced that ornament and tradition are the shackles of an irrelevant past. But more often than not, their minimalist and function-based designs arrive at an aesthetic completely at odds with the world that we have evolved to thrive in—with panels of glass, metal and concrete endlessly repeated in meaningless, boring patterns.
Such faceless buildings are not without cost. When we deny a building value beyond its use, we condemn it to be ephemeral. In this fact lies a paradox: it’s the sheer uselessness of beauty that makes a building most sustainable. And while some may view beauty as a luxury that impedes more important practical concerns, the philosopher Sir Roger Scruton cautions:
Aesthetic value is the long-term goal, utility the short-term. Nobody wishes to conserve a building if it does not look right; but if it does look right, someone will find a use for it…When form follows function it becomes as impermanent as function.2
FROM MASKS TO GENUINE FACADES
As a bizarre inversion of defacement, regulators sometimes direct architects to “preserve” historic facades by tacking on new development behind or on top of them. The overall effect is typically farcical, as if a beast could fool us by donning the mask of a harmless creature. While it would be best to preserve and add in kind, in cases like the one above, it would surely be better to demolish the building outright, instead of having its severed face displayed like a trophy. After all, we close the eyes of the dead because we find their empty gaze haunting.
In an attempt to make buildings interesting, architects sometimes employ masks of a different sort, turning facades into spectacles that intentionally subvert “bourgeois” sensibilities: a desperate plea for attention veiled as high art. But such efforts betray the true nature of architecture, which is unlike the framed worlds depicted in paintings. In contrast, buildings are fixed and imposing. Over their lifetime they will host countless passers-by in myriad states of mind. For this reason a building cannot afford to be frivolous, like some mask-wearing party-goer at Carnevale.
Instead, a building should face its surroundings with an enduring presence. It should look out with respect and genuine appreciation for the community around it. To help accomplish this goal, I suggest that architects keep these three thoughts in mind:
ENHANCE THE STREET: Help form a positively-shaped space for the public that compliments the existing character of the immediate surroundings.
RESPECT THE COMMUNITY: Recognize the aesthetic sensibilities of the people most affected by the building, using skill and creativity to manifest them beautifully.
DESIGN WITH FOREVER IN MIND: Avoid gimmicks and any detail that violates a timeless sense of beauty. Order your facade so that almost any function could adapt within the walls behind it.
The library photographed above is a contemporary facade that I take great pleasure in passing by. It has much of the presence that my principles try to describe: There is an orderliness to it that befits a public building, with embellishments that make it interesting to take in, especially the pair of bronze creatures guarding the entrance. The balance of massing, wall and window suggest a building unbound to any narrow use, and there is sufficient charm so that no Torontonian would wish it to be replaced with ordinary metal and glass storefront.
As with this example and many other everyday, beautiful buildings, when we place a value on the way that architecture faces the world around it, such structures become integral parts of the communities that they help shape. Architects and building owners should embrace this truth, and we should all regard the design and upkeep of a beautiful facade as a responsibility owed to the public. In return, the community will inevitably offer their love back to the building: by maintaining it, finding new uses for it, and organizing to keep the developer’s wrecking ball from destroying it. Perhaps, in the end, only beauty possesses that kind of sustaining power.
As an example, see this survey I recently conducted in my own neighbourhood as part of my work as a community organizer (in particular, questions 7 & 8).
Excerpt from Beauty: A Very Short Introduction by Roger Scruton, 2011.
Interesting article Brian . Well written