A FORM OF WORDS

by

Christopher Howell

I have been thinking about ergotopoeic buildings. I believe the word is my own invention. If an onomatopoeic word reveals its meaning by its sound, then an ergotopoeic building reveals its meaning by its look. The form of such a building doesn’t only show its function, it advertises it. It is the very opposite of Robert Venturi’s decorated shed. Let me explain.

First we have buildings that have nothing whatsoever to say about themselves or the activities or the people they contain. These are indeed a sort of shed that may be gently differentiated into supermarkets or carpet warehouses or video stores or multiplex cinemas by a little bit of judicious interior design and shop fitting, and by erecting a sign on the front. One day, I suspect, we may learn to love these buildings as much as Venturi apparently does, but I also suspect that for most of us that day is still some way off.

Next there are buildings that are recognizable from familiarity or custom, even though their form doesn’t seem to be absolutely necessitated by their content. A certain kind of architectural style has become synonymous with specific usages. I am thinking of art deco cinemas for example. There is no absolute need for them to have fluted towers, curved canopies, to be tiled and so forth, but the existence of these feature aids our ability to identify the building, increases its visibility in the landscape. Similarly banks try to look solid and ancient, good schools and colleges try to look serious and substantial. Some English pubs try to look welcoming and friendly, others try to look fierce and edgy. There are sound business reasons for all this.

Then there are buildings that seem irreducible and unalterable simply because of the function they fulfil and the activity they contain. One cannot, for example, imagine a sports arena that’s much different from Wembley Stadium or Yankee Stadium or indeed the Colosseum: a big central arena with lots of surrounding accommodation for spectators. There seems to be no other workable option. Equally, it’s impossible to imagine an aeroplane hangar that differs in any very significant way from all the aeroplane hangars we’re already familiar with. Greenhouses are always going to look like greenhouses. Nobody needs to reinvent the bus shelter.

This coincidence of form and function strikes us as good and honest, but some buildings, of course, consciously disguise their function. It may be a kind of trompe læil or it may be a kind of embarrassment, a need for discretion; so Las Vegas casinos are shaped like circus tents or Roman palaces or Chinese pagodas, anything to disguise the fact that these are places where people go to have their money taken away from them. I have seen estate agents’ offices shaped like Greek temples, domestic garages that look like Elizabethan cottages. It’s hard to feel any great moral outrage at this, and personally I’m more inclined to experience a rather melancholy feeling of bathos, but no doubt there are those who would see these structures as a perversion of what architecture should be.

Then we come to buildings such as Blackpool Tower or the Eiffel Tower: structures that are not without function, but whose chief function is to be eye-catching. We are in the realm of tourist attractions, I suppose, and I would guess that the Snow Queen’s Palace at Disneyland is the most extreme and successful of these; there is no snow, no queen and the building is not actually a palace; nevertheless, it serves its purpose ideally as a trademark and place of entertainment. It is not, I think, in the conventional sense of the word a folly since it is precisely functional. True, there’s a dislocation between form and function, yet the spectator is not deceived. He knows that he’s only looking at a trademark, whereas a spectator seeing Gothic ruins in a piece of Augustan landscaping might possibly believe he was seeing the real thing.

But none of the above structures could possibly qualify as ergotopoeic. So let’s compare two Los Angeles landmarks: the Coca-Cola bottling plant and the Capitol Records building. The former looks like a ship, complete with portholes and guard rails and funnel. It is certainly eye-catching, and undoubtedly there is folly in its conception. It is certainly deceptive in that it tries very hard not to look like a manufacturing and bottling plant. But even though it resembles a ship, it isn’t trying to deceive anyone into believing that it actually is a ship. It’s an amusing building. It looks good natured and free spirited. One assumes that working for Coca-Cola isn’t all fun and games, but the architectural style is in keeping with the perceived and created image of the product that’s bottled inside. But the question one asks about this building’s form is ‘Why?’ What’s the point of the Coca-Cola plant looking like a ship? What’s the connection between a tooth-rotting soft drink and an ocean liner? The answer is ‘none’. And that’s why it’s not an ergotopoeic building, whereas the Capitol Records building is.

The Capitol building is a tall, layered, cylindrical block with a spike emerging from its flat roof. From many angles and especially from the air, it looks like a stack of vinyl records on a spindle. There’s no functional reason why it should look that way, but as a means of self-definition and self-revelation it’s unbeatable. Anybody who drives past could reasonably assume it had something to do with the record business. For the Coca-Cola building to compete it should be shaped like a Coca-Cola bottle.

The Americans undoubtedly are rather good at this sort of thing. As we travel through roadside America, and let’s face it, all America is roadside America, we see doughnut shops shaped like doughnuts, fruit stalls shaped like gigantic apples or oranges. Historically guitar-playing movie stars have had guitar-shaped swimming pools. Eero Saarinen’s TWA terminal at what was Idlewild airport was convincingly birdlike, and I understand there’s a turkey farmer in California whose house is shaped just like a giant turkey.

I think this is great. I think there should be a law that says all buildings should be ergotopoeic. All buildings should reveal what goes on inside them simply by the way they look. So, abbatoirs would be made in the shape of beef carcasses. Brothels would be in the shape of breasts or phalluses (I know Ledoux got there first on this one with his House of Sexual Instruction). Public toilets should be in the shape of giant faeces. And nuclear power stations should, of course, be in the shape of giant mushroom clouds.