NOSTALGIA & lifecycle of a building
The feeling of longing is as old as modern human history; In the Old Testament, Adam ate of the forbidden fruit and was cast out of the heavenly Garden of Eden, only to long for its wonders and beauty for the remainder of his days. We perceive the world through the lens of our collective human experience. Enduring architecture is more than physical construction of buildings and spaces, it captures the imagination and captivates the hearts of its viewers. In terms of lasting and loved architecture, what is the connection between nostalgia and which structures endure? Does architecture that evokes a sense of nostalgia in the human experience become greater than its intended lifespan? What is the role of time and nostalgia in what buildings become ruins only to become landmarks preserved? To tackle how this elusive human emotion intersects with architectural spaces, we must start at the source; nostalgia as a concept and its origins.
Nostalgia, a newer term, was coined by Dr. Johannes Hofer in his foremost work Dissertation on Nostalgia published in 1688, originally referring to an illness displayed by Swiss soldiers. The document published by Dr. Hofer is acknowledged to be the first use of the word “nostalgia.” He described “youths” plagued by sickness and fever when they were far from their “native lands” and the remedy being only for them to “return home “ He used the word nostalgia because it is composed of nosos, “a return to native land,” and algos, meaning suffering or grief. (Hofer 1688, 381) According to Hofer, one cannot underestimate the importance of imagination; how what is in the mind is truly alive on a physical level. This fanciful longing is so intense, that what starts as something purely cerebral brings physical illness possibly comparable to unrequited love. The comfort and cure is the familiar; like a child asking for the warmth of its mother's arms when they are sick.
Revered and beloved architecture that stands the test of time, must possess a strong sense of nostalgia. Uses of buildings change. Furthermore, technology and how societies function change; A warehouse built in the 1700’s does not have the same purpose, needs, or structure as it did when it was built. What distinguishes between a structure that is preserved or repurposed rather than demolished? The time spent to rehabilitate, the effort to salvage, and the compassion to elevate the building into something more that its original purpose are all the result of the inherent collective nostalgia that a building must possess in order to become more then it's intended original life cycle.
Nostalgia and architecture are inherently linked. Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe, a well-known German author, poet, playwright, scientist and critic, “slipped away” on a journey of self-discovery to Italy in September 1786 shortly after his 37th birthday. His lifelong dream had been to visit Rome and he skillfully documented his journey; paying careful attention to the identity of place, the people, the dialect and even seemingly minute details such as soil characteristics. At the start of his journey, he commented on the choice of stone used in the provincial towns of Italy and how it was locally quarried. The authenticity of the place was due largely to the local materiality of the architecture and Goethe was indeed charmed by it.
The book is written as a diary and was published over thirty years later. Its format as a diary of intimate letters signified how deep his connection was to Italy, albeit he had never been there before that fateful voyage. From the first page, the reader is primed to understand that this physical journey is the result of an emotional longing that has simmered under the surface for many years. For the most part, Italian Journey is based on his original letters written to friends, but he also writes that “there is much in this record, I know, which could have been described more accurately, amplified and improved, but I shall leave everything as it stands because first impressions, even if they are not always correct, are valuable and precious to us... Architecture rises out of its grave like a ghost from the past, and exhorts me to study its precepts, not in order to practice them or to enjoy them as a living truth, but, like the rules of a dead language, in order to revere in silence the noble existence of past epochs which have perished forever. “(Goethe 1983, 103) Ruins rise from the grave like ghosts of the past and they are some of the most beloved examples of architecture today.
Sketch by Goethe from Italian Journey
If one examines Goethe’s writing on his travels throughout Italy, the merit of the architecture is inseparable from the awe surrounding it on an emotional level. When speaking of the Amphitheater in Verona, Goethe writes:
“The Amphitheatre is the first important monument of the old times that I have seen; and how well it is preserved! When I entered, and still more when I walked around the edge of it at the top, it seemed strange to me that I saw something great, and yet, properly speaking, saw nothing… Besides, I do not like to see it empty. I should like to see it full of people, … The emperor, although his eye was accustomed to human masses, must have been astonished. But it was only in the earliest times that it produced its full effect, when the people was more a people than it is now.”
How can one see something “great” yet see nothing simultaneously? In this sentence, Goethe distills the complicated relationship people have with architecture. It is a physical construct yet ceases to be so, once it exceeds its original lifecycle. (See illustration below.)
infographic by Tiffany Agam - do not reproduce without permission
In the Amphitheater Goethe saw ruins; A grave compared to the glorious past that was. Yet that wonderous past combined with the human longing to live it once again, elevates the pile of rubble to a monument with a potentially eternal life cycle. Goethe ends his thought on the Amphitheatre with bittersweet sentiment; he reminisces that the past must have been more glorious than present and that furthermore, those days are gone. He must essentially settle for the ruins, but they connect him to the past.
Sketch by Goethe showing architecture combined with surreal concepts.
Goethe travels on from Verona and arrives in Rome. As a boy he was beguiled by stories of its architectural wonders from his father; he writes:
“When one thus beholds an object two thousand years old and more, but so manifoldly and thoroughly altered by the changes of time, but sees, nevertheless, the same soil, the same mountains, and often, indeed, the same walls and columns, one becomes, as it were, a contemporary of the great counsels of fortune; and thus it becomes difficult for the observer to trace from the beginning Rome following Rome, and not only new Rome succeeding the old, but also the several epochs of both old and new in succession.” (Goethe 1983)
Goethe acknowledges that time has worn away and “altered” the buildings and landscape he sees before him; he is aware that they are not the same as they were when the great Emperors of Rome created them. Yet he observes that the continuity of the setting, the nostalgia of being in the same place as legends he has grown up with, create a surreal sense of time. The structures likely do not serve the same intent as their original purpose. Yet they have become iconic because of their legacies and the stories they tell. The marks on the columns perhaps make them even more endearing.
When architecture reaches the end of its lifecycle and there is nostalgia and sentiment attached to it, then it likely will not be demolished; The merit of keeping the structure must outweigh the benefits and costs to demolish and rebuild anew. There is then the decision of whether to restore and rehabilitate or to let it be. Galli in his book Nostalgia and Ruin, writes that “ruins are broken architecture... Ruins are both inside and outside; Nature and culture. Their otherness [means] entering a ruin we are both there and elsewhere. This is what renders ruins [as] metaphors of nostalgia, the frozen presentation of absence.”(Galli 2013, 23) In essence, ruins are living ghosts of empires past. They are an architectural contradiction which we hold dear to our hearts; Markers of time and proof of the greatness that was.
In order to have a sense of nostalgia there must be a void. Architecture by nature is the filling of a void. Creating structure or a “something” that wasn’t there originally to fulfill a specific purpose. When a building reaches the end of its lifespan and has not only been successful in filling the void, but transcends its physical structure, it will often be restored (and further celebrated) perhaps becoming an icon like the Eiffel Tower.
The Eiffel Tower, originally created as a temporary structure for the World Exposition in Paris in 1889, was so loved and successful in creating a new vision for Paris that it became a permanent landmark. SETE, Société d'Exploitation de la tour Eiffel, has over 340 full time employees carefully attending to the needs for maintenance, seasonal décor and social engagement of the landmark. The Tower was built to show how France was a modern, world leader in industrialization at the turn of the 20th century. It has become a romantic symbol of the glory days of the late 1880’s: When Jules Verne brought perilous adventure to every home in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea; When the silver screen was first graced with silent cinema; When candles and fire had been rapidly replaced by the Edison’s lightbulb. The age was glorious and full of remarkable innovation. The Eiffel Tower is a nostalgic time machine to that era. To love the tower is essentially to love the age that gave birth to it.
World Exposition posters showing the visual storytelling of age.
In Aldo Rossi’s Architecture of a City, the importance or ruins as urban artifacts and monuments is brought to light: “Creative success with regards to monuments needs therefore, to lay in the capacity to select what to preserve and what to demolish.” (Rossi 2018, 17) The monuments or ruins that survive will depend on public sentiment. How much does the ruin touch the viewers? There is a direct correlation. Even an ordinary warehouse that ceased to be in use could be transformed into a monument if it was nostalgic enough. If it filled a void; whether it be a memorial to lives perished due to fire or if it’s an homage to a “golden era.” The warehouse will cease to be used as originally intended, but if it fills a longing then it can become something more.
A revival of an architectural style can also be viewed as a nostalgic act. Immanuel Kant in Anthropology alludes to this when he states that “conceptions of objects often lead us involuntarily to subordinate to them a self-created image by means of productive imagination…. Your sense of seeing, for instance, is not so much affected by [changeable shapes and objects] as ought to be the case. In place of it, your mind occupies itself with reminiscences or loses itself in thought.” (Kant 2015, 361)
Gothic Architecture, which originated in the Basilica of Saint Denis near Paris in the year 1140, experienced a revival in the 1800’s. The Palace of Westminster, which houses the English House of Parliament, was rebuilt after a fire in 1512. The architect, Charles Barry was selected to design the rebuild and chose a Gothic Revival Style. When it was rebuilt, the charred ruins of the Old Palace were integrated into the new structure. Although the architect did not live to see its completion, he knew that the revival style he selected would essentially link the newer building in a lineage of glory and to a history of architectural prestige. The revival of style aligned itself with the holy places in which it originated and was a tool to heal the physical and sentimental loss created by the fire’s devastation.
In The Shape of Time, George Kubler wrote that “in effect, the only tokens of history continually available to our senses are the desirable things made by men... Such things mark the passage of time with far greater accuracy than we know.” The nostalgic structures and ruins that have touched the collective soul of mankind are the markers of the modern history. With time, there is loss and change in architecture and in society, which creates a void inherently. The elusive and mysterious concept of nostalgia is can only exist in “presence of an absence” (Galli,) yet these ruins and obsolete buildings endure. They are proof of what was; In the greatest and in the worst times of our history. Nostalgia is the key to the endurance of a building: Whether a building can continue to fill the void on more than its original intended level, is what will ultimately determine its fate.
Works Cited
Clark, Kenneth, and Joseph Mordaunt Crook. The Gothic Revival: An Essay in the History of Taste. London: J. Murray, 1995.
Denslagen, Wim. Romantic Modernism Nostalgia in the World of Conservation. Amsterdam University Press, n.d.
Erder, Cevat, and A. Bakkalcioglu. Our Architectural Heritage: From Consciousness to Conservation. Paris: UNESCO, 1987.
Esposito, Benedetta. “Aldo Rossi - the Architecture of the City.” Academia.edu, April 30, 2018. https://www.academia.edu/36535410/Aldo_Rossi_The_Architecture_of_the_city.
Galli, Giovanni. "Nostalgia, Architecture, Ruins, and Their Preservation." Change Over Time 3, no. 1 (2013): 12-26. doi:10.1353/cot.2013.0001.
Kant, Immanuel, Allen W. Wood, Robert B. Louden, Robert R. Clewis, and G. Felicitas Munzel. Lectures on Anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.
Kubler, George. The Shape of Time: Remarks on the History of Things. New Haven Conn.: Yale University Press, 2008.
“Medical Dissertation on Nostalgia by Johannes Hofer, 1688.” Accessed December 10, 2021. https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/44437799.pdf.
Roberts, Russell. The Eiffel Tower. Kennett Square, PA: Purple Toad Publishing, Inc., 2017.
von, Goethe Johann Wolfgang, Heitner Robert R (trans), Thomas ed Saine, and Jeffrey ed Sammons. Goethe: Italian Journey. Cambridge, MA: Suhrkamp/Insel Publishers Boston, 1983.