Cosmic architecture for insight

A quick chat with one of the most foremost architecture professors of his generation back in February 2008:

If you’re looking for insight into the world around you, you could do worse than speak to John McKean. After a lifetime teaching, practising and writing about architecture, the Brighton University professor was chosen for a once-in-a-generation job: to rewrite the architecture student’s bible, Banister Fletcher. He took time out of his busy schedule to speak to Charlie Jones about pyramids, the cosmos and why Brighton needs civic space.

What issues are shaping architecture in 2008?
Money. Money is incredibly important. That may have always been the case, but it is more obvious than it has ever been. The gap between rich and poor is massive and growing, but there is a huge quantity of money to be spent—this is a very affluent society, which means that the headline-grabbing buildings become more iconic, more extraordinary. But at the same time the cheap housing being built now is immeasurably sloppy. We really are building the slums of the future—there is no interest in the public realm.

So, what do you think of architecture in Brighton?
Brighton is a continually missed opportunity. It tries to be flash above being good. Places of value and quality get turned down, and shoddy, shoddy buildings are made in their place. There is a huge amount of attention paid to one-off “projects”, but the way that people actually interact with the space around them is made is largely oblivious to these set-pieces. The seafront, the traffic, the North Laine, The Level: these are the things that make up our environment and our experience of an urban space, and they are all handled very badly. The i360 is a perfect example of this—I don’t doubt that it will be quite fun if it ever gets built, but it stands right above a dreadfully dilapidated stretch of the seafront, and it is this—more than any single attraction—that makes up our experience of a city. Most cities develop from a very real geographic imperative—a harbour, a river and so on—but Brighton has none of this: we are a city largely by accident. We are now officially a city but we have no public space to enact public rituals, which is something that every city has. And needs. That isn’t to say that you can’t make big gestures—you should make no small plans, as Daniel Burnham said—but these have to be big, not hollow gestures.

At your lecture you spoke about the way that architecture’s purpose is to frame man in the cosmos. Could you expand on that idea?
Architecture was almost always seen as a setting for a ritual of human life, much the same as it is now the setting for our own social and secular rituals. What is important is that they serve as a setting for our required behaviours, which more often than not is concerned with locating us in the cosmos, understanding the world around us and negotiating what it means to be human. And it is architecture that can physically locate us in the cosmos—it’s common knowledge, but the pyramids were built in strict alignment to the stars, and the vast majority of Hindu churches are built with the door facing east, as are Christian churches, so morning light will flood into the space. This thirst for symbolism continues, albeit in a rather crude form.

Quick question to finish off: how can the ordinary person “read” a building, and can you explain the beauty of architecture?
How does one read a building? I suppose that looking around would be a start. Architecture is pleasurable and beautiful, but it has a communicative, historical and social element that no other art form has. A building will hopefully survive for many, many lifetimes, but at the same time it has to be viewed and used—the Victorian architect Pugin said that the history of architecture is the history of the world, and I believe that. It is how we communicate, with our ancestors, the people around us, and future generations. And that is beautiful.