The idea that the pipe dreams of intellectuals will come true now that we have a pandemic is just another form of wishful thinking. As Bas Heijne, a Dutch public intellectual, has recently put it, everybody is predicting a post-pandemic future that meets their own worldview. Anti-globalists foresee the collapse of globalization, climate activists consider this as a moment to take decisive action on global warming. Anti-capitalists see this as a chance to end the Neo-liberal myth of free markets and small governments. Etcetera.
After reading his piece in a newspaper in March I have become very reluctant to give my two-cents on anything. But still, thank you for asking. I would wish the pandemic triggers a rethink, and will change our environmentally destructive behaviour. But I am not certain it will happen, or at least not enough to save us from ecological collapse. Yet, there are glimmers of hope. Even for me as a frequent flyer (and knowing it affects the livelihood of many people), I somehow like the prospect that it will take years for airlines to recover, particularly if in the meantime it becomes clear it is unsustainable and morally questionable to board a plane for what will be increasingly seen as frivolous and unnecessary reasons. It may give us time to break a very bad habit.
If this sounds naive, or stupid, to my defense, our current collective lockdown has affected me mentally. And I think I am not alone. I am sorry to say that I cannot escape the impression that many of the brightest minds seem locked down as well. This is perhaps the smartest observation I have to offer right now.
For the rest, I don’t know what will happen. The only thing I can do as an historian is what I am trained to do: to look back. And then I can see that the penultimate pandemic, at the end of the First World War, heralded an unprecedented cultural period. I cannot evaluate causations and correlations (see mental lockdown above); I also realize that many great avant-garde movements, from Cubism and Futurism to Expressionism and Constructivism, predated the Spanish Flu, and the Great War. But the period right after, produced architectural marvels like Le Corbusier’s villas, Ginzburg’s Narkomfin Building, Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilion and Tugendhat House, Gropius’ Bauhaus, Brinkman & Van der Vlugt’s Van Nelle Factory, the Weissenhofsiedlung, Schindler’s Schindler-Chace House, Asplund’s Stockholm library, Rietveld’s Schröder House, and please feel free to add some of your own favourites to this list.
Then came the Great Depression, which had a disastrous effect on economies and societies, and the life of people, but still, great architecture prevailed in the 1930s. More villas of Le Corbusier, Wright’s Fallingwater and Johnson Wax, Terragni’s Casa del Fascio, Chareau & Bijvoet’s Maison de verre, Lubetkin’s Penguin Pool, Aalto’s Paimio Sanatorium, Van Alen’s Chrysler Building, Hood and Harrison’s Rockefeller Centre, the early work of Niemeyer, and so forth. (Please fill in your favourites again).
If there is any lesson to be drawn from history, it could be this: Despite the building industry’s dependency of the economy, architecture can survive severe recessions. So, based on passed events it cannot be inferred that the pending Great Depression will have a negative effect on architectural culture. Nobody is expecting that art, literature or music will get worse, so why would one be concerned for architecture? It may be bad for architects, but that is not the same. The conditions under which architecture is produced may change, but it remains to be seen if this will be detrimental at all for its quality and significance.
If there is any lesson to be drawn from history, it could be this: Despite the building industry’s dependency of the economy, architecture can survive severe recessions