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Ertegün House, Bodrum, Turkey (1973)
by Turgut Cansever
(Photo by Christopher Little)
The Aga Khan Award for Architecture
Tradition and Originality
Henbury Rotonda
by Julian Bicknell
Why should we resign from claiming the legitimate
right of using concepts like originality, inventiveness and creativity? It appears that the practice of traditional architecture
benefits of the most impressive sum, not only of historical evidence, but of contemporary demonstration of impressive originality
and inspired creativity! The quantity and quality of contemporary traditional architecture and urbanism is overwhelming and
reassuring. This will necessarily influence in a decisive manner the ways of thinking, of building and of teaching architecture
and urbanism.
Villa Rotonda, Vicenza
by Andrea Palladio
(Photo by Mary Ann Sullivan)
The quest for originality has often been criticized
as a futile modernist frivolity. Infact originality is often considered as the search of ostentative novelty, provocative
otherness and weird randomness.
However it seems appropriate to question:
1) - the reductive interpretation of originality, 2) - its monopolistic abuse by modernist critics and artists, 3) - the rejection
of originality by contemporary traditional architects and urbanists.
Infact we should acknowledge again the 'original'
sense of originality which consists in re-assessing the foundation of something in its origin. Originality would thus be the
very essence of the creative polarity of tradition and nature...Rather than investigating the boundaries of speculative catastrophies,
originality encompasses the continuous reactualization of original types and patterns in human creation.
Henbury Rotonda
by Julian Bicknell
"The first step we have to make is to
examine, if we are allowed the term, the genealogy and relation of our ideas, the causes that have given rise to them, and
the characteristics that distinguish them: in a word, to return to the origin and generation of our knowledge."
D'Alembert
"Discours Préliminaire" to the "Encyclopédie"
Can Jordi, Formentera, Spain (1992-1993)
by Philippe Rotthier and Laurence Prevedello
(Photography by Philippe de Gobert)
"Arquitecturas - Ibiza"
(A.A.M. Editions Bruxelles)
Origin and Originals
Garden Pavilion by Quinlan Terry
(Picture from A.D. Profile: "Quinlan Terry")
The 'Little Rustic Hut' which Abbé Laugier consacrated as the exclusive Protype of Architecture and which
Quatremère de Quincy discussed as the 'Cabane Symbolique' or 'Allegorical Prototype' representing Architecture's origin in
timber construction.
Betsimisaraca, Village in Madagascar
Houses on 'Pilotis' with Exterior Portico
(Photo from Photothèque, Musée de l'Homme, Paris)
"Primitive Architecture" by Enrico Guidoni
(Copyright Electa, Milano 1979)
"Architecture (Arche-tectonike) means
literally 'Form of Origin'. - If this definition
is relevant for the architecture of any organism and structure, it is fundamental for Architecture as the Art of Building.
It is not that the principles of Architecture reach into an immemorial past, that but their origin is forever present."
Léon Krier
(AD Profile: "Houses, Palaces, Cities")
House in Sri Lanka
by Geoffrey Bawa
The Aga Khan Award for Architecture
"Origin here means that from and by which
something is what it is and as it is. What something is, as it is, we call it essence or nature. The origin of something is
the source of its nature."
Martin Heidegger
"Poetry, Language, Thought"
Pavilions at Highgate, London (1981)
by Demetri Porphyrios
(Photo by Demetri Porphyrios)
"The distance between a new work and the
model that has inspired it is indeed always the hallmark of creative talent, pointing out the contemporaneity of
the work.
An artist is said to be original exactly when he takes up the challenge of tradition and makes us
see something more than we already know.
Originality, and thus the modern itself, consists in this distance between the new and the model as
the new emplots itself within tradition."
Demetri Porphyrios
"Classical Architecture"
(Andreas Papadakis Publisher)
Barn in Belvedere Village, Ascot, England
by Demetri Porphyrios Associates
(Photo by Demetri Porphyrios)
Hebil Bay Stone Houses, Turkey (1997)
by Oguz M. Öztuzcu
(Photo by Draman Yauvuz)
The Aga Khan Award for Architecture
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