Making Their Mark in Stone and Steel

Such is the permanence of what they create, architects are able to enjoy their successes far more than in any other profession. They cannot fail to get a thrill each time they drive past their latest eye-catching residential block, office building, theater or any other construction that has been well received by critics and the public.

By the same token, they are also doomed to live with their failures--the constant bricks-and-mortar reminders of creations that looked good on the drawing board, but which prove to be everything from impractical for their users to visual eyesores constantly under fire by the selfsame critics and public. A good example was the modern extension to one of London's ancient major art galleries, slammed by Prince Charles as a "monstrous carbuncle", and subsequently modified.

Architects ruefully complain that whatever they design, it never achieves universal acceptance simply because its impact on people is almost totally subjective--a matter of personal opinion. The same will probably happen as Beijing's huge range of Olympics-related stadiums and other buildings take shape between now and 2008. But there will be no complaints from architects. For them, brickbats and bouquets are the name of the game.

So what does architecture really represent? Does a wattle-and-mud hut in the jungle, built with materials taken directly from the land, rate as architecture in the same way as a marbled palace? Do modern architects try hard enough to marry beauty with practicality in their creations, and vice versa? And are so-called "intelligent" buildings the best path for the future, as many architects insist?

Whatever the answers, it remains a truism that a building--any building, no matter how expensive and beautiful, or ugly and inhospitable--is little more than an attractive but empty box unless people inhabit it, and thus ordain it with life. This is how it was in the beginning, and how it will ever be.

Most living creatures make some kind of shelter--a nest, a hole, a hut. When the hut is consciously built to a pattern, for example when facing the sun, or with sleeping quarters separated from cooking space, the shelter becomes "architecture" because it incorporates the basic architectural elements of function, planning and ornament.

Architecture reflects the life of the people who create it. This is particularly true of one of the very earliest civilizations, ancient Egypt, which lasted from about 3100-330BC. To the Egyptian ruling caste, a house was merely a temporary resting place on the human passage to eternity.

The permanent abode was the tomb, so it was to tomb and temple building that pharaohs and priests directed the energies of their architects. Egyptian houses, built of brick and timber, have long since vanished. The tombs survive, and are among the most enduring of man's architectural achievements.