The natural opposite of pride in one's country is shame, or, in a less dramatic way, embarrassment. When a society is troubled by its past, public architecture has an especially important but difficult task. The British Embassy in Berlin, by Michael Wilford, struggles with the idea of national pride (120). The upper levels, with their strongly neoclassical rhythm of wall and window, like a squared-off aqueduct, are noble and
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A nation confused about grandeur.
120. Michael Wilford. British Embassy. Berlin. 20(H)
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l etting visitors know 'who' Bhutan might he.
Kerry Hill, A man кота Hotel. Bhutan. 2007
One is moved by the sacrifice, but unsure quite in whose name it имк place.
Emil Sodcrstcn and John Crust, War Memorial, Canberra. 1941
pure. They could belong as much to the history of German architecture as to British, which is fine, since it helps the embassy live like a good citizen in an already crowded street. Above the entrance, Wilford has made eccentric, strongly coloured forms emerge, as though a crazy guy is hiding behind the stony face, and here he is punching his way out. One could see this as an attempt to say what Britain should be proud of: its inner oddity. But this feels like the work of embarrassment. The embassy seems to be saying, 'I'd love, really, to be grand and noble and dignified; Fd love to be charming and honourable, only Гт worried you will misunderstand me and think I am pompous and arrogant, as I might have been in the past. So I'll play the fool instead - then you won't get angry with те/
Pride is closely connected with identity. Before you can feel proud of your community, you need to have a positive and contemporary image of who you actually are. This isn't always easy; identities have a habit of lagging behind a nation's current realities by a few generations. We see plenty of examples of countries trying to forge identities that build on tradition but aren't slaves to them, however. Bhutan, the small Himalayan Kingdom on the border of China and India, has a distinctive architectural tradition based around monastic fortresses. It also has a tourism industry crucial to its economy. At the Amankora resort, Australian architect Kerry Hill has been loyal to that tradition with wide eaves, elaborate wooden cantilevered windows, and massive, inward- sloping walls, but all this is adapted to modern technology and the pleasure and convenience of visitors (121). Hills architecture judiciously sums up key themes in the country: its traditions and its need to engage effectively with the global economy; its proud sense of individuality and its need to be understood and liked by the world; its devotion to purity and its curiosity about the pleasures of comfort. In other words, the resort development is saying that Bhutan is committed to being a traditional country in quite a profound and detailed way, but it wants to pursue this without being defensive; that is, without a rejection of sophistication.
Embassies and hotels are crucial for national identity because they are the places where outsiders encounter a society. War memorials are another kind of structure with a responsibility to sum up what a country is at its best. Like many nations, Australia places a great emphasis on them. At an imaginative level, and at certain moments of collective self- consciousness, its large war memorial in Canberra has simply been the nation (122). The memorial was designed by Emil Sodersten and John Crust to commemorate the Australian dead of World War I, and was inaugurated in 1941. It is a solemn and grand structure. It invites us into an elevated sense of history, but then becomes reticent. While we might be sad that so many people died for Australia, the memorial doesn't in itself tell us why they made this sacrifice or what is so special about this nation that one might want to die for it. It evokes the sacrifice, not the entity in whose name it occurred. In other words, the building could be anywhere. This matters a lot, given the seriousness of what is at stake.
For a better answer to the dilemmas of Australian identity, we might turn to the works of the architect Glenn Murcutt, whose buildings have done a great deal, arguably more than the war memorial in Canberra, to articulate the spirit of Australia. In a house he designed for himself in South Australia, Murcutt used all the familiar architectural elements of
An Australia to love - and. if it came to it. die for.
123. Glenn Murcuir. Murcutt House, Woodside. South Australia. 1995-6
the country he loves: the corrugated iron, the big cylindrical water tanks, and the shed and garage doors (123). These are not only rural features, but are also very common in the suburbs where almost everyone lives. Despite this ubiquity, Murcutt has brought them together in a refined and beautiful composition. Water tanks are usually situated conveniently to catch the run-off from the roof, and tucked away on the assumption that they arc unworthy of notice, or because it is slightly embarrassing to pay attention to the aesthetic merits of an avowedly utilitarian structure. Murcutt s house, however, is a lesson in pride. It does not simply assert that water tanks are great, and that the house is great because it has lots of them. Rather, it seeks a way of showing what can be lovely about these elements. In the composition they are reminiscent of the defensive towers on either side of a castle gate. Those, too, were utilitarian in origin, but their beauty and poetry of association have gradually come to the fore. Murcutt helps us recognize the dignity of a building style that is only regarded as humble because its practical elements have not, until now, been attended to properly or integrated with adequate skill into domestic design. Along the way, he also points Australians towards what they can be proud of in a realistic and practical way. He gives reasons to love and, if it were to come to it, to die for a nation.
Who Should We Try to Become?
In 1956, the Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer was invited to play a central role in the creation of his country's new capital city, Brasilia. Among the most impressive of the buildings he designed was the National Congress (124). Brazil is a country of frenetic economic activity, of rainforest and Amazonian villages,favelas^ soccer, beaches and intense disagreement about political priorities... none of which is apparent upon contemplation of the National Congress. Instead, the building imagines the Brazil of the future: it is a glass and reinforced concrete ideal for the country to develop towards. In the future, the building argues, Brazil will be a place where rationality is powerful, where order and harmony reign, where elegance and serenity are normal. Calm, thoughtful people will labour carefully and think accurately about legislation; in offices in the towers, judicious briefing notes will be typed up; the filing systems will be perfect - nothing will get lost, overlooked, neglected or mislaid; negotiations will take place in an atmosphere of impersonal wisdom. The country will be perfectly managed.