The Scale of Globalisation
What the previous chapters each show, in their different ways, is the complex relationship between architecture, urbanism, cultural identity and globalisation. There can be little doubt that the cities around the Persian Gulf have undergone a process of urbanisation and modernisation over the past few decades; they are clearly not the same places they used to be. But as previous accounts of urban modernisation reveal – with the classic still being Marshall Berman’s All that is Solid Melts into Air – it is far from being an even or consistent process.1 The effects of uneven modernisation around the Gulf have been discussed throughout the chapters of this book. Today there are now the almost tired older centres of development such as Abadan/Khorramshahr or Kuwait City or Dammam; as well as busy newcomers like Manama or Doha or Abu Dhabi or Sharjah, epitomised above all by Dubai; or indeed the places in Iran where modernisation has the most potential to rush ahead in future, including Bushehr, Kangan/Banak, Bandar Abbas, Qeshm, and, above all, Kish Island. In general, the cities on the western Arabic coastline are larger and more central to their own country’s economic and cultural life, while those on the eastern side tend to be far smaller and more marginal within Iran, at least for the present. This final chapter will not attempt to force any simple conclusion, especially given that modernising processes and their effects are still so uncertain in the Persian Gulf. Instead, I will set out some thoughts about the subject of architectural globalisation and also point to new tendencies, drawn from a critical perspective, which can suggest other ways to design for Gulf cities in the years ahead.
From the outset, I should make clear that I am not a fan of the usual definitions of globalisation within architectural discourse. Critics have rightly warned of the danger of treating globalisation as if it were somehow a natural and inevitable process.2 But it seems equally dangerous to portray globalisation as if it were merely a construct of neo-liberal economics which architecture have then to decide whether to ‘react against’, ‘work within’, etc.3 What is needed instead is to find ways of talking about globalisation that do not simply play into the hands of the powerful elites which currently dominate global capitalism – instead, the aim ought to be to pull apart the material and ideological mystifications of globalisation.
19.1 Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank in Hong Kong by Foster + Partners (1983–1986)
We have to do this because globalisation, however it is defined, is the crucial transformation of our age. All other issues, including our widespread worries about climate change and loss of biodiversity, follow in its train. Yet it is equally obvious that architecture still has a difficult time in adapting its discourses and practices to suit global conditions. What is often referred to as architectural globalisation often doesn’t have that much to do with it, or else stems from its least interesting or appealing aspects. Instead, there needs to be fresh thinking about architectural globalisation, something I will attempt in this essay by arguing for a change in conceptions of scale away from the dimensions of form and space, to the dynamics of form and space. It is a process already happening through the emerging conditions of globalisation, as will be seen later when referring to some of the architectural initiatives now underway in the Persian Gulf – i.e. in a region of the world, as this book has shown, which offers an exemplar for studying the impact of globalising processes.
First, however, it is worth spelling out some of the problems with normal views about architectural globalisation. This can be done by considering three canonical buildings: the Hong Kong Shanghai Bank in Hong Kong, designed by Foster & Partners (1983–1986), the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao by Frank Gehry (1993–1997), and the Chinese Central TV Headquarters in Beijing by Rem Koolhaas/OMA (2004–2012). They have often been cited as icons of architectural globalisation from each of the last three decades. Yet in fact they are but part of a far older pattern of dominance whereby a few countries – firstly in Europe and later the USA – held cultural sway over what were regarded as relatively undeveloped or ‘backward’ places. Thus these three iconic buildings exist because of the imposition of supposedly ‘superior’ ideas and values from outside, and thus from above. It is certainly noticeable that none of the buildings picked up anything from engagement with its context that went on to change the subsequent designs of their respective architects in any meaningful way. It is the old pattern of imperialism and colonisation by any other name, once again making a fetish out of the public display of power and wealth.
19.2 Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao by Frank Gehry (1993–1997)
19.3 CCTV Building in Beijing by Rem Koolhaas/OMA (2004–2012)
Rem Koolhaas, the CCTV’s designer, is one of the smartest architects around, and as such is more than aware of that key tactic of the avant-garde, which is to declare a contradictory position to what one is actually doing while also showing one is aware of doing this. Hence we find an astonishingly self-conscious quote from Koolhaas in Der Spiegel when he says:
I have a very hard time with the expression “star architect”. It gives the impression of referring to people with no heart, egomaniacs who are constantly doing their thing, completely divorced from any context …4
And if that were not an astute piece of auto-critique, Koolhaas goes on to talk of the consequences for the ‘star architect’ in designing too quickly for yet another contentious brief in a place they know little about:
… There is less time available for research, so a tendency toward imitation develops. One of our theories is that one can offset this excessive compulsion toward the spectacular with a return to simplicity. That’s one effect of speed.5
From such a statement it is only a step to the empty symbolism of buildings such as the so-called ‘peace pyramid’ in Astana by Foster & Partners, opened in 2006 for the autocratic ruler of Kazakhstan, or Zaha Hadid’s ‘space age’ concoction for the SOHO Galaxy offices in Beijing (2010–2012). If this really were to be the end-goal of architecture after all those millennia of human society, then we might as well pack up and go home. But if we remind ourselves that what Koolhaas, Foster, Gehry, and now Hadid, are up to has relatively little to do with globalisation as such, then there can be another way forward.
19.4 SOHO Galaxy in Beijing by Zaha Hadid (2010–2012)
A similar problem exists in writings about architecture and globalisation. These texts tend to be rather limited in conception, and focus on one particular aspect such as the architecture associated with global finance (Anthony King), the internationalisation of design practices (Donald McNeill), or the possibility of an alternative regionalist approach (Liane Lefaivre and Alexander Tzonis), rather than attempting to write about the subject in a more rounded manner.6 A more in-depth analysis of contemporary globalisation has been published recently by Robert Adam, although his book too approaches the subject from what is an overly specific viewpoint, being largely concerned with how cultural identity can or cannot be expressed visually in architecture under globalising conditions.7
The resulting problem is that when we read accounts of architectural globalisation we tend to find authors lazily falling back onto one or more of the usual myths – one could even call them fallacies – about globalisation. Although each contains a trace of truth, as myths generally do, the net effect is to diminish the discussion of the subject. To tease this point out further, the five common fallacies can be categorised as follows:
1. The economic fallacy: i.e. that globalisation is essentially all about the working of multinational capitalism and its concomitant financial markets, money flows, and digitalised data transfers. This is of course an ideologically driven reification of globalisation which only ultimately serves corporate interests, stripping the term of any broader validity and reducing it to its most utilitarian tendencies. It is an attitude which also beleaguers even much of the best critical writing on globalisation, such as by Joseph Stiglitz or Hardt and Negri.8 And what the reductive economic viewpoint conceals above all is that cultural globalisation is by far the most vital component in the whole process, and indeed happens irrespective of problems with financial flows – as has been revealed during the worldwide recession that began in 2008 and which as yet shows little sign of ending in most countries.
2. The homogenisation fallacy: i.e. that globalisation is about smoothing out everything and creating a single world order, whereas in actuality it is constantly creating new kinds of difference and heterogeneity, and in ways that will never be uniform or consistent. As Henri Lefebvre once remarked, definitively: ‘No space disappears in the course of growth and development: the worldwide does not abolish the local.’9 Hence the dyspeptic vision of global uniformity has to be viewed instead as a symptom of deeper cultural anxiety about social change. Liane Lefaivre and Alexander Tzonis are particularly representative of this condition, for instance having written:
As globalization increasingly enters every facet of our lives, its homogenizing effects on architecture, urban spaces and the landscape have compelled architects to embrace the principles of critical regionalism, an alternative theory that respects local culture, geography and climate.10
As an observation it is totally wrong, of course, and as Mark Crinson and others point out too easily, critical regionalism is an inherently conservative viewpoint in which the original sense of a political critique of capitalism is lost, leaving only backward-looking romanticism.11 One could also voice the same point by taking another quote:
Some fear that the world is coming to dreadful uniformity and monotony. If so, this day is yet far off. At present we may shudder at the terrific, often senseless, variety of it all.12
The only problem is that the quote happens to be over 70 years old! It comes from Richard Neutra, an émigré Austrian architect in the USA back in the 1930s, and could be used word-for-word as a response to the doomsayers today.
3. The origination fallacy: i.e. that it is only about ‘Americanisation’ or ‘Westernisation’, when in fact globalisation is far more precisely defined as the condition that has arisen because of the ending of the post-war era of US hegemony. To many outside observers, America is now a quasi-empire in decline, as can be shown by economic figures: whereas in the mid-1960s the USA was estimated to account for about half of the world’s combined economy, today that figure is only about 25 per cent, and is falling. Although the US still possesses the biggest economy in the world, recent UN data shows that China overtook America in 2010 as the largest manufacturing nation, following a meteoric rise over the previous five years.13 As with Britain a century ago, America is now in the process of being economically eclipsed by other countries, with particularly China, India, Brazil and Russia forging a more complex balance of global power. This is why it is so important to keep in mind a broader historical account of globalisation, rather than sloppily confusing it as being equivalent to modernity, or to post-war American hegemony in the Cold War era. Instead, those might well have been its preconditions, but what we now conceive as globalisation emerged after the ‘Oil Crisis’ in the mid-1970s, along with other early signals of fading US hegemony.14
4. The novelty fallacy: i.e. that globalisation is an entirely new phenomenon, whereas of course it is being built on top of centuries-old structures of world trade and imperial conquest, and if anything is somewhat patched up and shaky. Indeed, the global movement of people seems the normative condition for humankind, and hence concepts of nationality or cultural fixity – as dominated during the age of ‘high’ capitalism – were perhaps more of a blip in history. Even the briefest glimpse at the Taj Mahal or Oxford’s Radcliffe Camera or the Hospital of Santo Antonio in Porto or Le Corbusier’s designs for Chandigarh – to cite just four of the countless examples available – shows that many seminal buildings are designed in complete contrast to indigenous traditions, yet have been welcomed and adopted as belonging to a place. Or to put it another way, if we believe geneticists like Steve Jones, then the mixing together of the global gene pool has always the main driving force for human societies, and modern technological lifestyles simply accelerate the process.15 It this is indeed the case, then the current fascination with multicultural cities and hybrid architecture echoes this underlying genetic trend.
5. The technological fallacy: i.e. that globalisation is driven by trans-spatial technology and thus is essentially about information flows, digital telecommunications, the internet, long-haul air travel, etc. These technologies have even invented their own fictions such as cyberspace or the global internet map. But while these trans-spatial technologies undoubtedly aid the spread of globalisation, again they remain something different. So whenever one hears that globalisation is failing because of technical problems with the internet, such as viral attacks or cyber wars, it is entirely misguided. Technology can only ever be a concretization of existing social relations, never a major driver in itself, and therefore globalisation occurs irrespective of technology. Let us also not forget that technology tends never to be used in the ways it was intended, nor in the end can it offer solutions as such, only different methods of organising things. As David Edgerton usefully reminds us, in general it is older forms of technology which work better.16
Having identified the five fallacies which prevail in normative discourse about architectural globalisation, it becomes obvious that we need a far more dynamic and nuanced formulation. If one looks at other academic disciplines, there has been a more searching effort to define globalisation, thereby revealing aspects that are extremely relevant to architectural production. Here, for example, is a definition from the German social philosopher, Jurgen Habermas:
By ‘globalisation’ is meant the cumulative processes of a worldwide expansion of trade and production, commodity and finance markets, fashions, the media and computer programs, news and communication networks, transportation systems and flows of migration, the risks engendered by large-scale technology, environmental damage and epidemics, as well as organised crime and terrorism.17
Analysed in this way, globalisation is revealed as a complex and intertwined network in which multiple points of influence impact on each other, and these in turn are influenced by interaction with countless other nodes. Globalisation can thus be conceived as a field in which a multitude of actors and agencies are constantly operating, rather than the linear process with unmediated flows of influence under ‘classic’ imperialism. This suggests a cultural model that rejects binary divisions such as centre/periphery, global/regional or global/local – or indeed any notion that a single ethnic group or country can hold some kind of truth which they then ‘diffuse’ or ‘disseminate’ to others via colonisation or other means. Instead, what do exist are complex trans-cultural networks of exchange in which any attempt to posit a hierarchy is futile. The result of all this, as many observers point out, is that the defining basis of globalisation is the hybrid.18 Above all, global hybridity creates and also thrives in a condition which is heterogenic, fluid and fissured.
Hence what architecture requires is a deeper vision of globalisation closer to what Stuart Hall terms ‘globalisation from below’, by which he refers to the mass movement of people across the world and the opening up of cultural practices like architecture at a fundamental level.19 Much of this human movement is of course driven by desperation and fear, and is deeply traumatic and exploitative; it can also be said to do little to alter existing imbalances of power in societies. Yet nonetheless it opens up greater opportunity and hope than existed previously for the majority of the world’s people. Globalisation is therefore not at all synonymous with the tough invisible processes of top-down ‘economic globalisation’ as described by analysts like Saskia Sassen, although such factors are indeed part of it.20 Instead it is the cultural changes deriving from the migration of people and their ideas which offer the greatest creative potential for architecture in a rapidly transforming world. As one example, a few years ago the British building press reported, somewhat excitedly, that a third of people in architectural offices had been born overseas: yet there wasn’t even a flicker of concern – with most believing the figure was probably higher, especially in London. If British architecture can be seen as healthier than ever, which certainly appears the case, to a large extent this is a product of those who were not born British. One only has to look at Zaha Hadid (Iraq) or David Adjaye (Tanzania/Ghana) or Niall McLaughlin (Ireland), and so on, or at buildings by the likes of Herzog and de Meuron (Switzerland), designers of the Tate Modern, to realise just how vital non-Brits are in energising the scene.
What is required is a time-sensitive conception of globalisation that connects us both to ‘deeper history’ and, as far as possible, to futurology. What, for example, will globalised architecture look like in the 22nd