I’m going to start this with a confession: until I read ‘All that’s solid melts to air’ I had no idea what the story of Faust was, I’d heard the name but had no idea what the concept of a Fuastian story was all about. Luckily this commentary on Gothes Faust start with no real introduction, no overview of the story arch & you’re told next to nothing about the author and his history.
Whether or not starting from scratch is a good thing i don’t know, you could argue that you go in carrying no preconceptions and are therefore more open to the ideas. Luckily for me i spent the first few pages in a state that I can only compare to trying to read street signs in a foreign language, you know what’s written are words, you know the ones you want are in there somewhere, but there’s not a hope in hell of figuring out where you’re going.
Right rant over text read twice we’re back on an even keel. Gothe’s Faust is shaped by the industrial revolution, written over a period of 60’s Gothe saw the industrial world exploding around him. Living on the cusp of such rapid development will no doubt form certain ideas about that development and the new idea of capitalism. As we’ve riffed on in previous blogs I’m pretty sure the ‘minds’ of our time are finding the apparent death of the capitalist dream just as interesting.
We’re dealing with simile again here folks! Ms Hadid must be feeling uncomfortable right about now there’s a real simile vibe running right through this whole blog. The key to this is not what the characters do but what they represent. In the first act Faust becomes infatuated with Gretchen and simple girl from a puritanical world. Gretchen and her world represent the world of god. Mephisto on first glance seems to represent the devil but it’s much more than that he represents the world of science, of discovery. This concept of duality is key not only to this text but to looking at cultural theory in general, for every action there is a reaction, after all how do you know good if there is no evil?
As the story develops Faust takes on the role of the developer, but he’s not in it for the bucks ladies and gentlemen, Mephisto points out that he could be raking it in but instead it’s a more ‘noble’ purpose Faust sees for himself, a vision of how he can make humanity better. Much like Corbusier he conceives a way he thinks he can improve the lives of everyone . We’re back to talking about context again, at the time Gothe’s penning his tome some thinkers in France are coining phrases like ‘Socialisme’. There’s a good plot twist here, i never saw it coming, here i was thinking we were knee deep in a traditional industrial revolution capitalist tale, but no our protagonist is living the socialist dream.
That Faust ends up blind (ironic that his tale ends with exactly how i felt when i started reading this) represents his loss of humanity, holding on to his vision ignoring the damage it may be doing, even when he begins to destroy himself. Sounds a lot like some headline architects who shall remain nameless.
‘You were so busy thinking about whether you could, you never stopped to ask if you should.’ For those wondering where that quote comes from its Jurassic Park! I’ll be honest I’m feeling a little smug at being able to make the same point with a quote from a Spielberg movie that it took Berman 60pages and most of the contents of a thesaurus to say. What we’re getting to here people is that we should interrogate our choices as architects we have a duty to, but more than that we should because others will. We should be interrogating our work to deliver the best building we can, I’d look pretty silly demanding answers of Ms Hadid if i was unwilling to provide a few of my own.
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