The architect’s field of cultural fodder is ever-expanding. Recalling the line in the movie Annie Hall, when a young Woody Allen “can’t sleep because the universe is expanding,” there is simply – and increasingly – so much to see that it can lead to anxiety.
Architecture often inspires pilgrimage. We travel to the most sacred architectural sites: famous projects by famous architects, history’s grand buildings, and even to obscure locations on the rumor of forgotten constructions or even despised starchitecture to experience fallout of the Bilbao effect when one can ask: is it really as bad as the critics think?
The architecture-oriented pilgrimage is a journey of primary, first-hand experience – and the journey is sometimes as important as the destination. The “Grand Tour” was historically for the elite; the travel of Le Corbusier in Italy, Greece, and Turkey was exceptional at the turn of the twentieth century. But we now live in an era of the internet, Easyjet, and budget hostels. The inaccessible is merely a few clicks away.
A pilgrimage in the traditional sense is about repentance, absolution, and redemption. Architecture has always played a role in both secular and religious journeys, in the design of sacred enclosures or the provision of basic infrastructure for sometimes arduous travel. For architects, the ease of travel and the pressure to go to the newest, hottest sites combine to make a discipline that seeks the actual beyond internet images and slick renderings. Clearly photographs, plans, and models are not a substitute for the experience of visiting these places in real life.
We should also consider what is perhaps the most modern type of pilgrimage, travel to the Venice Architecture Biennale, the Rotterdam Biennale, Documenta, and other similar must-go events on the cultural calendar. These events have an aspect of communion to them; true believers, enthusiasts, casual observers, and skeptics all come to take part in an event together – not so different from many pilgrims on the more traditional routes like the Santiago de Compostela.
In this fast-moving, digitally dependent era, it is fascinating to consider how these pilgrimages have changed, and how they have retained the qualities of the more rarified grand tours of old. What are we really visiting? The physical structures or their contexts? Are they sites of memory or concentrated spaces of common contemporary experience? We visit buildings, travel through landscapes, meet other like-minded people. How do these experiences change us by the time we get home?
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