Charles Jencks > Quotes

“A recurrent theme of this book is that architects, fairly low in the chain of command and needing jobs, are prone to compromise with the state and the establishment. Very rarely do they resist the zeitgeist. On a political level such compromise leads to the folly of invading Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, follies of modern complicity too obvious to need comment. On an architectural level they lead to tearing down historic districts, building leviathans for multinationals or, for instance, constructing with cheap building systems that soon collapse.”
― Charles Jencks, The Story of Post-Modernism: Five Decades of the Ironic, Iconic and Critical in Architecture

“…every act, object and statement that man perceives is meaningful (even “nothing”) and […] the frontiers of meaning are always, momentarily, in state of collapse and paradox.”
― Charles Jencks, Meaning in architecture;

“Whereas art critics are ready to accept-indeed are looking for-the new fabrication of a consistent visual language, architectural critics, like the general public, are much more conservative and unwilling to accept the introduction of new codes.”
― Charles Jencks, Adhocism: The Case for Improvisation

“There is an unalterable and widening gap between exterior and interior, symbol and content, form and function -a gap which is making the environment more and more inarticulate, impossible to understand and difficult to manipulate.”
― Charles Jencks, Adhocism: The Case for Improvisation

“For instance, Le Corbusier and Amedee Ozenfant proposed a theory of painting and architecture which would be based primarily on Platonic forms: cones, spheres, cylinders, cubes, etc. They argued that only these simple forms were universal, and that they would in fact set off "identical sensations" in "everyone on earth- a Frenchman, a Negro, a Laplander”. In essence they were arguing for a universal language of the emotions- Purisme which would cut through the Babel of contending, eclectic languages. The individual words of this language would be the psychophysical constants found by psychologists. A flat line would mean "repose," a blue color "sadness,'' a jagged, diagonal line "activity,'' and so on until the whole gamut of emotions” (82>83) had been built up. They argued, as Plato often did, that nature had constructed within us a fixed language based on efficiency, geometry and function; this language of the emotions was the most economical and pure one-hence Purisme.”
― Charles Jencks, Adhocism: The Case for Improvisation

“This is perhaps the most fundamental idea of semiology and meaning in architecture: the idea that any form in the environment, or sign in language, is motivated, or capable of being motivated. It helps to explain why all of a sudden forms come alive or fall into bits. For it contends that, although a form may be initially arbitrary or non-motivated as Saussure points out, its subsequent use is motivated or based on some determinants. Or we can take a slightly different point of view and say that the minute a new form is invented it will acquire, inevitably, a meaning.”
― Charles Jencks, Meaning in architecture;

“Like politicians, they may pretend to be in charge and shape society – this is a large part of their hope and mental equipment – but it is mostly an accident if they do so.”
― Charles Jencks, The Story of Post-Modernism: Five Decades of the Ironic, Iconic and Critical in Architecture

“…the nausea due to misunderstanding a language, the fear due to unfamiliarity with a style, the conflict of generations, are all mild examples of sign shock.”
― Charles Jencks, Meaning in architecture;

“Once when walking – “A French colleague turned to me suddenly and pointed toward the spire of a cathedral which had just come into view: ‘Jetez un coup d’oeil sur cette fléche!’ the glance was painfully exquisite; literally, ‘Throw a blow of eye on top of that spire!’ I could suddenly see my eyeball wrenched from its socket and thrown across the field to be impaled on that pin-sharp point. But my companion was completely laconic. He had just meant ‘look at that spire’ and no such ludicrous sensations were reverberating through his head, because to him the metaphor was almost dead. The signs which were deeply embedded in the French language were partially asleep and inaccessible to him. Whereas to myself suddenly they were awake in that raw state of freshness, even wetness, of the newly born.”
― Charles Jencks, Meaning in architecture;

“The act of posting a letter would become too complex with significance: a walk down the stair-way, over the door-stop, on to the side-walk, across the pave-ment and over to the mail-box. Common objects would dissolve into their primal states, each having an independent life.”
― Charles Jencks, Meaning in architecture;

“the philosopher Karl Popper and his ally Ernst Gombrich, wrote many critiques of the zeitgeist and argued that although there is no such thing as historical inevitability, there most certainly is a ‘logic of the situation and climate of opinion’, and morality consists in resisting those pressures when they are socially negative. In architecture this syndrome became the alliance of mass production with mass urban renewal, cheap housing and overcrowding.”
― Charles Jencks, The Story of Post-Modernism: Five Decades of the Ironic, Iconic and Critical in Architecture

“The Cult of Reason sprang up all over France in 1793 and was even worshipped in the Cathedral of Notre Dame. After the Bishop of Paris resigned, proclaiming his previous error of supporting Christianity, the Goddess of Reason, impersonated by an actress of wealthy means, took his place at the altar. She sat under a baldachino holding the new symbols of power, while all around her danced Jacobins in various states of religious, revolutionary and reasoned ecstasy.”
― Charles Jencks, Adhocism: The Case for Improvisation

“…semiologists would agree is that one simply cannot speak of “meaning” as if it were one thing that we can all know or share. The concept meaning is multivalent, has many meanings itself…”
― Charles Jencks, Meaning in architecture;