As a ubiquitous art form that serves a functional as well as aesthetic purpose,

architecture plays a pivotal role both in reflecting the development of a society

and in constructing the environment within which that society functions, and
relates, both to itself and the outside world. This essay aims to explore how
universal techniques in architecture, and the spread of the Modernist movement,
have led to urban built environments reflecting global trends as opposed to local,
traditional architecture. It looks at regional responses and adaptations of
Modernism, as well as the shift towards Post-Modernism, situating the
contemporary architecture industry within the context of globalisation, and
suggests how architects serve to accommodate both the divisive and inclusive
nature of a global economy.

Architecture cannot be entirely universal. Buildings are inevitably specific to local

topographic, cultural and climatic conditions, however, advanced techniques and materials, as
well as transport and communication links, have allowed the appropriation of Modernist
concepts and a universal architectural language throughout most, if not all, of the world.
Technological advances such as electric lighting and air conditioning, as well as the physical
ability to flatten a site (as opposed to engaging with its natural topography), have had an
enormous effect on the spread of the ‘placeless’ aesthetic championed by the pioneers of the
Modernist movement. Unlike most other artistic disciplines (although classing architecture as
an artistic discipline may be at odds with Modernist principles) the format of the built
environment in which we live provides a unique experience of the spread of universal
techniques and shared global approaches. But it is for this reason, the impact that architecture
and urban design have on society, that they have struggled for so long with how to engage
with, or master, the tension between the local and the global.

Unlike the majority of other art forms, an architectural work necessarily takes its place
amongst other buildings, or within a specific setting; it is always part of a land, or city, scape.
In this way it is part of an ever changing dynamic, as buildings are knocked down, replaced,
and added to. This presents a specific difficulty to architects, especially in the context of the
speed at which global developments occur in contemporary society. As it takes around six or
seven years form the beginning of the design process to the completion of a building,
architecture constantly faces a battle to ‘keep up’ with world developments, and how these
may affect the client or location. 1 It also, almost uniquely in terms of art, is functional (which
is not necessarily the same as Functional, as Tom Wolfe reminds us). And so, as similar
functions, especially in terms of finance and the service industry, are performed all over the
globe then logically the forms of buildings which house these services is likely to be similar,
especially now as technological advances make climatic and topographical considerations
less important. But this simplifies architecture to the level of a building, ignoring the
aforementioned built environment, as well as the cultural and, as we shall see, symbolic
properties of any construction.

Obviously there are two faces to architectural construction; commissioned buildings on

the one hand, and residential developments etc on the other (or, more loosely, public and
private). Here I shall only be concerned with the former, and specifically ‘flagship buildings’
that convey more clearly aesthetic concepts and trends, and have a greater physical impact on
1
From this point of view it may be argued that architecture only follows global trends and events, there is
a constant lag, and so cannot adequately be used to analyse societal developments, on a local or global scale.
But this view fails to take into account architecture as the manifestation of the vision of both client and
architect, architecture is always a response to the future.

1
the public space of an urban environment. This is not to suggest that developments in
residential construction are not worth investigating (especially when one considers that
residential worker housing was the source and motivation of the Modernist movement) but
only that there is not the space to deal with them here.

It must be remembered, of course, that architecture is a commercial, and hugely

competitive art form, prompting Frank Lloyd Wright to state that there are only three things
which an architect must know; number one, how to get a commission, number two, how to
get a commission, ad number three, how to get a commission (Libeskind 2005:19). The
emergence of new economic powers and the global nature of Late Capitalist economy means
that architects receive, and seek, commissions from all corners of the planet, as they ‘chase
investment’, prompting Gwendolyn Wright to class them as “peripatetic professionals”
(2002). Not only do architects respond to widening global networks, they also play an
important role in promoting a global culture, “by creating a uniform identity for the
intangible process and complex operations of a multinational corporation” (Huppatz 2005).
But the consistent question, or aporia, of architecture is how can civil society manifest itself
in built form in the context of a “commodified world of universal globalization” (Frampton
2007:385)? And of what importance is the vernacular, and how can contemporary design find
its place amongst ever-changing cityscapes without destroying or suffocating any sense of
traditional urban culture? As well as this, recent developments in sustainability and
environmentalism have meant that once again the engagement with the traditional must be
reformulated. But first it shall be useful to explore the development of Modernism and the
International Style, and how our built environments have come to represent, if not a universal
style, then the universal concept of ‘placelessness’, emerging out of Europe in the early 20 th
century.

The precepts of what Tom Wolfe described as, “that glass of ice water in the face, that
bracing slap across the mouth, that reprimand for the fat on one’s bourgeois soul, known as
modern architecture” (1982:7), were the machine aesthetic and the promotion of efficient
production methods. The tagline of ‘form follows function’ led to the geometric designs and
glass facade, steel exterior support, and concrete floors and interior championed by Walter
Gropius and Mies Van der Rohe. The function was originally worker housing in Europe after
the First World War. Following Le Corbusier’s declaration that the house is ‘a machine for
living’ the aims of groups such as the Werkbund, and later the Bauhaus in Germany, de Stijl
in the Netherlands, and the pan-European (later international) CIAM (Congrès Internationaux
d’Architecture Moderne)2 were strongly socialist, even utopian. A declaration by CIAM in
1929 claimed the social aims of Modernism as being “to foster the maximum satisfaction of
the needs of the greatest number” (Frampton 2007:269).

Recognising that architecture was contingent on political and economic developments

there was a shift towards more compact, functional design, recognised by Siegfried Giedion
as an attempt to match the shifting global climate after the First World War, citing Le
Corbusier’s design for the League of Nations Palace in 1927 as an attempt to reflect a more
universal style of architecture, that didn’t owe any of its roots to any one national tradition
(1941:421). The concept of a neutral architecture had already been explored in Austria and
Hungary in the 1920s by Otto Wagner, although unsuccessfully according to (the ever
cynical) Tom Wolfe; “The government thought (quite mistakenly) that a new and
2
The naming of the CIAM group, as International, shows the universal claims of European art in the early
th
20 century, but also the belief that this new style of architecture could transgress national, and continental,
boundaries.

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cosmopolitan architecture might help transcend the country’s bitter racial and ethnic
hostilities” (1982:19).

But it was re-emergence of ethnic hostilities in the 1930s which truly allowed for the
development of Modernism into the International Style. The exodus of many architects from
Europe, especially Germany (and the Bauhaus compound) to the United States in the wake of
the rise of National Socialism marked the establishment of Modernism as the principle
architectural style in North America. Although labelled by Henry-Russell Hitchcock and
Philip Johnson as the ‘International Style’ in 1932, the Modernist movement was limited in
its reach, mostly within Europe and North America 3. But the rise of the USA post World War
Two as the major world superpower and the adoption of, and in some cases scramble for,
American design and culture allowed Modernism to become the principle, in fact almost the
only, architectural design concept of the ‘developed’ world.4

However it would not be accurate to imagine that the appropriation of a universal concept
meant that identical buildings were being erected all over the world. The functionality of
buildings means that regional dynamics and conditions could not be ignored. Giedion
described modern architecture as “too much the product of our whole period not to exhibit
some universal tendencies, but, on the other hand, it is too much concerned with problems of
actual living to ignore local differences in need, customs and materials” (1941:431).

I shall shortly explore some of the regional reactions and variations of Modernism but
first the major criticisms that led initially to local reaction, and later to the crisis of direction
marked by the advent of Post-Modernism. The obvious difficulty, which remains today, was
finding a way to unite the functionalism of the International Style with a local setting; for the
Japanese architect Tadao Ando, “it seems difficult...to attempt to express the sensibilities,
customs, aesthetic awareness, distinctive culture, and social traditions of a given race by
means of an open, internationalist vocabulary of Modernism” (Frampton 2007:324). The
shortcomings of the Modern movement were clear, especially its Eurocentric belief in
attempting to forge an aesthetic that could break down the regional tensions that have marked
most of European history. Proponents of globalisation today claim the same justifications for
a spread of global culture, namely, the immersion, and thus diffusion, of local cultures and
traditions in favour of a cosmopolitan globe which must, inevitably and teleologically, lead to
a conflict-free world, citing reaction against globalisation as quaint patriotism or
backwardness.

Aldo Van Eyck argued strongly along similar lines that the eradication of style and place,
this ‘ubiquitous placelessness’, was unable to meet the pluralistic demands of society without
the mediation of the vernacular (Frampton 2007:276), in other words, without some
grounding in a specific location, a specific culture and a specific history. More recently Rem
Koolhaas went further in introducing the notion of ‘junkspace’, as the residue of the
Modernist project;

“Modernization had a rational program: to share the blessings of science, universally.

Junkspace is its apotheosis, or meltdown... Although its individual parts are the

3
The Modernist movement within the Soviet Union is well worth looking at, especially its idiosyncrasies
and ideology, but falls outside of the range of this essay, having less of an effect global developments than that
within the Western Capitalist countries.
4
The effects of post-colonialism would soon establish Modernism in many of the developing nations, as
shall be discussed later.

3
 outcome of brilliant inventions, lucidly planned by human intelligence, boosted by
infinite computation, their sum spells the end of Enlightenment, its resurrection as
farce, a low-grade purgatory” (Koolhaas 2002).

For Koolhaas it is the project of Modernity that fails, the belief in progress, of a continually
better world gradually freed of injustice and inequality, Modernist architecture is the tangible
result of this failure.

For both Koolhaas and Kenneth Frampton the air conditioner serves as the ‘main
antagonist of rooted culture’, as ‘indicative of universal technique’ (Frampton in Foster
1983:27). Air conditioning acts as the major tool with which architecture can be produced
irrespective of climate and local conditions (the main sources of traditional architecture in
any country in the world). Nothing more radicalised the way buildings could be designed in
the 20th century.

Another criticism aimed at Modernism was that, paradoxically, despite its original
socialist aims and workers’ housing projects, the growth of urban business districts based
around the functional skyscraper served, in the eyes of De Carlo, as a means of dislocating
the poor (Frampton 2007:279), of encouraging ghettoisation, and (re-)generating class
hierarchies under the guise of urban renewal. Any sense of urban culture was submerged
beneath the growing ‘motopias’, any individuality of location was lost under the ‘functional’
constructions that emerged, literally, from ‘nowhere’, bereft of any links to community and
serving to alienate the individual, who lived or worked, or both, in these constructions, from
the city as a dynamic cultural environment.5

Alvar Aalto, who developed a distinctive style of regional Modernism in Finland, rejected
the ‘technical functionalism’ of the Modern style as it violated the individual. Aalto’s concept
of ‘architecture with a human dimension’, although Modernist in style, “represents the
antithesis of the Functionalism of many other modern buildings” (Nerdinger 1999:9). Aalto
made it a point to work with the topography of a site, to ‘cultivate’ its location and therefore
firmly give it context, as opposed to the abstraction of typical Modernist design. Aalto’s
architecture, along with a range of others’, can be classed under the bracket of Critical
Regionalism. Coined and advocated by Kenneth Frampton it entailed, not a return to the
vernacular, “once spontaneously produced by the combined interaction of climate, culture,
myth and craft”, but a synthesis between local context and universal techniques; “those recent
regional ‘schools’ whose primary aim has been to reflect and serve the limited constituencies
in which they are grounded” (Frampton 2007:314). For Frampton, Critical Regionalism can
act as an alternative to the ‘placelessness’ of Modernism which, he claims, has been
appropriated in contemporary society by capitalism in promoting and allowing the consumer
society. His critique of society draws largely on the work of the Critical Theorists, but for
architecture he posits the notion of the regional ‘enclave’ as a means to place creation, to
stand against, and ‘momentarily check’ “the ceaseless inundation of a placeless, alienating,
consumerism” (Frampton 1983). What Frampton means by ‘placelessness’ is the process of
flattening sites as opposed to engaging with irregular topographies through terracing, and
cites Aalto’s Saynatsalo Town Hall as an example of ‘cultivating the site’ (Frampton in
Foster 1983:26). This does not mean abandoning the progressive effects of Modern
architecture but refusing the notion that a single universal style of architecture is applicable,
without regional alterations, universally. As well as Aalto, Frampton cites a number of other

5
It is easy to recall here one of Le Corbusier’s mantras; ‘We must kill the street!’

4
architects attempting to deal with the same problem, including Alvaro Siza in Portugal
(Frampton 2007:317).

The grass steps of Alvar Aalto’s Saynatsalo Town Hall, completed in 1951; one example of his attempts to
engage with local topography and ‘cultivate the site’. (Sourced from Wikipedia.org)
The spread of Modernist architecture to colonial regions poses a number of problems, not
least the post independence attempts to establish a nation’s own tradition while at the same

5
time asserting their own maturity and finding their place on the global stage. Paradoxically,
for many nations the only way to assert their independence, in terms of urban design, was to
adopt universal techniques and the Modernist design concept, the very same methods
employed in the contemporary architecture of their former colonial power. Reinforcing this
was the fact that most of the architects in a number of ex-colonies post independence were
either ex-patriates or were trained in the former colonial state. To take the case of Fry and
Drew’s project (both ex-patriated local architects) for University College, Ibadan in Nigeria
in the 1950s; although their design “shows a particular concern for the adaptation of
Modernist form to perform climactically..., the materials (concrete, steel windows, metal
sheeting) and the programme (under the direction of University College, London) were
largely imported” (Le Roux 2004).

As can be seen in many countries of the ‘developing’ world the pressure on becoming
‘modern’, in being able to take part, and compete, in a global economy, has meant that
modernisation has taken place at the expense of an adequate infrastructure and served to
reinforce the inequalities that existed pre-independence. Modernist architecture must be
recognised as playing a role in re-establishing colonial hierarchies based on an elite, sealed
off, social structure that allows main business districts in developing cities to resemble their
counterparts in any other part of the globe, and act as the main, if not only, focus of wealth,
while neglecting the wider population. But this phenomenon is not unique to the developing
nations6, perhaps what is a factor of a truly ‘globalised’ world is the spread of the
ghettoisation of urban business districts that stand like fortresses or citadels shielding those
within from what happens outside, closer to London, Tokyo or New York than some of the
quarters of their own city. As communication and finance link up the globe in vast
commercial and cultural networks architecture and urban planning have helped to set the
limitations, or restrictions, on who has access to the ‘globalised’ world. The global belongs to
the elites while the lower rungs of society are left with the residue of whatever is left of their
mongrelised local cultures.

The contemporary architect of today, the ‘peripatetic professional’, is part of these

networks that join up the globe, at the same time following and constructing them, or more
accurately, reinforcing them. The job of the contemporary architect is to attempt to keep up
with the changing dynamic of 21st century society. Like the buildings they design they can no
longer be linked to a specific environment. Koolhaas’ description of the abstract nature of
contemporary functional designs stands equally for the architects who produce them; “[they]
float and gravitate around the place in an opportunistic manner, offering the maximum
number of relationships” (1992). Daniel Libeskind can be said to represent the epitome of the
contemporary architect; born in Poland, and growing up, first in Israel, then New York, he
can boast projects in Berlin, Toronto, Copenhagen, Hong Kong, Tel Aviv, London, New
York and elsewhere. For Libeskind his own experiences of diverse cultures filter into his
work; “There are many worlds in my head, and I bring all of them to the projects I work on”
(Libeskind 2004:12). But for Fredric Jameson this diversity, or cosmopolitan approach to
design, reflects the decentred nature of global, multinational culture, reinforced by urban
developments in which “there is absolutely no perspective at all” (Stephanson and Jameson
1989). He suggests that the “new world space of multinational capital”, abstract and fluid,
“finds its ‘impossible’ representation in the mirror-glass and steel ‘hyperspaces’ of the Los
Angeles Bonaventure Hotel and other contemporary urban megastructures” (Davis 1985).
Mike Davis argues that the Post-Modern shift in architecture serves to give “freer exhibition

6
As anyone who has seen Julien Temple’s film Requiem for Detroit will be aware.

6
than ever before to the spirit of fictional capital... loosen[ing] the commodity form of the
building from its use-value” (1985).

Buildings are becoming separated from their original functions in an attempt to foresee
every potential whim of every potential client or consumer, although in many cases they
serve to create the whims they cater to. This can be seen in the case of ‘mega-airports’, that
function symbolically as the nodes of the global communication and leisure network.
Airports are no longer merely points of departure or arrival, they obscure the boundaries
between the functional and leisure. It’s quite possible now to go on holiday and have every
whim catered for without ever leaving the airport of your destination. Take Singapore for
example, which has recently added two cinemas and a swimming pool to the public amenities
of its airport (Frampton 2007:386). Airport terminals are the ultimate placeless location, a
kind of no-man’s land freed from the restrictions of local tradition.

Effectively, what contemporary architecture, in terms of major, flagship design,

represents is a shift from the functional, machine aesthetic of Le Corbusier to the building as
pure symbol. The architect is reduced to selecting “a suitably seductive mask” (Frampton
2007:307). This does not mean that there has been a break with Modernist design principles,
but only, and perhaps inevitably, with the utopian, socialist drive behind the concept. What
originated as abstraction for functional reasons has become abstraction for symbolic ones.
The process of abstracting, or removing, a building from its surrounding built environment
serves to present a global image; the building acts as a corporate image reflecting the values,
or intended values, of a corporation. The symbolic facades of a number of contemporary
buildings situate them within a global network, as representation of the globalised world, and
at the same time cut off the built environment around them from those elitist global networks.

The HSBC and BOC buildings in Hong Kong epitomise the role of architecture as
corporate image in the ‘globalised’ world. Constructed as part of the two companies’
rebranding processes the buildings (the HSBC designed by Norman Foster, a British
architect, and the BOC by I. M. Pei, an American architect) are “resolutely abstract, anti-
historical and self-consciously global in ambition” (Huppatz 2005). Also as part of the same
process both banks developed new corporate logos which removed any cultural or historical
elements. The buildings are an extension of this concept, which Huppatz describes as,

“a critical part of the banks’ expansion into the global market where specific
historical and cultural allusions must be kept to a minimum so as to appeal to the
broadest possible consumer base. In this version of globalization, local references
and histories can be alienating, thus both banks resorted to the safety of
abstraction, high technology and the future, erasing the culture specificity of the
past and present in their wake” (2005).

Thus, in a globalised world, function is replaced by image, and the implications of that
image, normally measured in terms of financial gain. 7

7
There is a potential analogy here between corporate flagship buildings and the actions of football clubs in
signing players not purely on footballing ability but on the potential revenue from that player’s image, in effect
to become the face of the club to drive commercial income. The most glaring example being the huge sums
‘invested’ by Real Madrid on Christiano Ronaldo.

7
Norman Foster’s HSBC Headquarters building in Hong Kong, featuring the new, abstract, corporate logo on
top, replacing the old coat of arms from colonial times. (Sourced from Listicles.com)

Dubai stands as perhaps the supreme example of placeless, abstract architecture as

symbolic image. Standing alone surrounded by sea and sand as the ultimate consumerist
Utopia (literally ‘no place’), Dubai represents perhaps more than anywhere else the spread of
capitalism and the reduction of local traditions to a global culture.

8
 Similarly, there has emerged in architecture what has come to be known as the ‘Bilbao
effect’, after Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, which stands for the
competition, particularly amongst developing cities, in attempting to secure the work of big
name architects, in order to act as symbolic constructions and reflect the dynamic image of
the city. In this way architects can be accused of chasing investment, but what this trend leads
to is the growing abstraction of building designs and greater emphasis on the symbolic
function of the building, reflecting both the city to the global, and the global upon the city.

But although there is a case that Modernist architecture acts as a form of western
imperialism and urban developments serve to reinforce already existing inequalities,
architecture’s impact on globalisation is not limited to Modernism, and its derivatives. The
Modernist style fits patterns of globalisation which are based on capitalism and the consumer
society, but other forms of globalisation also depend on architecture to play an important role.
In terms of the spread of religious fanaticism, as a new form of imperialism, Gwendolyn
Wright cites the Saudi based Wahhabi sect as, in an effort to purify the Islamic faith,
attempting to impose their own prototype for the Mosque as a universal for Islam; the
building of these ‘imposing’ structures, subsidised by Saudi wealth, “condemns the
multifarious local traditions of Southeast Asia, China, Africa and other locales” (Wright
2002). Although I do not have space to explore the dynamics of contemporary religious
architecture in the context of globalisation it is an interesting point, worth exploring in depth,
and serves to highlight the powerful position that architecture holds as a medium for the
spread of ideas, and as an imperialistic, and divisive, tool.

Architecture, and urban planning, lie at the very heart of the ‘globalisation’ movement,
constructing the necessary space, whether this be virtual or physical, within which the spread
of capitalism grounds itself. The dynamics of Late Capitalism which reinforce class divisions
and widen the gap between the global and the local by allowing or denying access to global
networks mirror that of architecture, as it functions on two separate levels; local
development, mainly housing and small developments, and the global construction of
symbolic corporate flagships. But the global, or perhaps what could be better termed the
generic, is encroaching within the private realm, if largely due to affordability, one only need
look at Ikea to grasp this notion. As the public and private gradually blur the effect of
architecture, in the construction of our built environment, cannot be underestimated. As our
lives become more and more consumed by the virtual, public architecture works to sustain
this notion of placelessness and fluidity within the society of the spectacle at the expense of
local tradition and culture.

Works Cited

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Davis, M. (1985) ‘Urban Renaissance and the Spirit of Postmodernism’, New Left Review,
151

Foster, H. (ed.) (1983) The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on postmodern culture, Seattle: Bay Press

Frampton, K. (2007) Modern Architecture: A critical history, London: Thames & Hudson

Giedion, S. (1941) Space, Time and Architecture: The growth of a new tradition, London:
Oxford University Press

Huppatz, D. J. (2005) ‘Globalizing Corporate Identity in Hong Kong: Rebranding Two

Banks’, Journal of Design History, 18 (4)

Koolhaas, R. (1992) ‘Urbanism after Innocence: Four Projects: The Reinvention of

Geometry’, Assemblage, 18

Koolhaas, R. (2002) ‘Junkspace’, October, 100

Le Roux, H. (2004) ‘Modern Architecture in Post-Colonial Ghana and Nigeria’,

Architectural History, 47

Libeskind, D. (2005) Breaking Ground: Adventures in life and architecture, London: John
Murray

Nerdinger, W. (ed.) (1999) Alvar Aalto: Towards a human modernism, London: Prestel

Stephanson, A. and Jameson, F. (1989) ‘Regarding Postmodernism – A Conversation with

Fredric Jameson’, Social Text, 21

Wolfe, T. (1982) From Bauhaus to Our House, London: Cape

Wright, G. (2002) ‘Building Global Modernisms’, Grey Room, 7

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