“Character” as a concept is problematic, first and foremost, because of who and how it is defined. Its relevance is given power since public officials, such as those on the Great Barrington Planning Board, are asked to make a determination regarding character within their jurisdictional processes.
So, how is it determined? In which ways should it play a role when thinking about the future of a town or city? Is it static or evolving? Should it play a role in governmental policy at all?
Architectural history provides some insight into the origins of the concept of character, but it is to the natural sciences that we owe the foundational method of sorting of species by their differences. Before the mid 1700s, buildings began to be classified by the ways in which they strayed from an “ideal” type but, after the mid-18th century, as is described by Michel Foucault in “The Order of Things,” buildings began to be judged by they way they convey an essence (my emphasis) of a place based on their “fit” within a larger group of buildings. Indeed, two methods evolved within this sorting process: a figural character which measured the stature of building and a literal character determined by similarities in details and other markings in relation to a surrounding context.
Soon thereafter, a building’s character expanded to address the relationship between its internal functions and its outward expression. It was assumed that there were particular places for particular building types. Strategies evolved by which buildings were judged by their ability to convey qualities such as maleness, light, the pastoral, the naive, the feminine, the mysterious, grandness, vagueness, virility, the elegant or rustic, the delicate, and so on.
Obviously, it is physiognomy to which architecture turned for creating buildings and spaces that reflected a character that was logical to its use and place. These were places with identities defined by architectural features, scale, and an overall figural expression that reflected the whole of human endeavors. However, it was the buildings themselves, individuals within a group, that created the character.
But to what extent did these episodes reflect the differences within an 18th century society? And to what extent was it possible to reflect different types of uses within an architectural language if development had a limited expression? Quatremere de Quincy, the 18th-century architectural theorist, set out to clarify character. To him, there was more to the literal/figural dichotomy. He articulated three distinct features of character — essential, relative, and distinctive — which reflect the moral and physical conditions of architecture.
Essential character is perhaps the most lofty of the three, relying on a presence within a landscape and a building’s relation to nature as opposed to the “relative” function and expression of buildings and their detailing and outward expression giving them their “distinctive” character. It is essential character, with its illusions to a spirit-core (again, my emphasis), that is most problematic for us today; and de Quincy states that it is under-developed societies that convey essential character. It relies on what we might term a feeling of immediacy to a context without any consideration to uses or the more modern terms of bulk and height.
It is appropriate to say that essential character is what communities turn to when expressing the character of their neighborhoods. Edmund Burke’s definition of the artificial sublime, its qualities of silence, immensity, vastness, and contrast found in nature, could be considered the impetus by which developments are often judged to have an essential character. But are we to judge places strictly by their physical appearance? How does history play a role in the construction of character? And to what extent is the importance of the preservation of an essential character relevant to the pressures and needs of contemporary life? And who is the ultimate arbiter?
Carole Owens, in her March 23 Connections column for The Edge, Progress and preservation, asked these very same questions:
“…what makes one place uniquely and distinctly that place? Is the distinction in its history or in its physical characteristics? Is it in when and how it was settled or who settled it? What do we want to preserve — the story itself or the real things that made the place unique?”
I would add this: to what extent can a place remain static historically and be relevant in the present and future? There are many places in the Berkshires that bank on the preservation of their physical history for their economies. These are usually villages and towns with significantly important historic buildings or natural ways worth preserving, and it is important to preserve that legacy for future generations.
There are also areas dotting the Berkshires that are facing enormous pressure to maintain civic and cultural life, to attract people of all ages who will create businesses and grow their families into thriving communities. When a town is facing a zero vacancy rate for rental housing, is subject to the inequitable and unsustainable force of a voracious real estate market that prices out the middle and working classes, and has run out of developable land, communities must make the sacrifices for the common good to allow the character of their communities to evolve.
I would argue that character as a judgement has no place to play in the decision making process of policy makers. Zoning determines the size of developments and what can be allowed to go where, not always by right and often subjected to special considerations that use character as a criteria for policy judgement.
It is my contention that here is no way for elected leaders to find consensus on the character of a place. As individuals, we are bound to have different perceptions of what is the essential, relative or distinctive character of a place. We are always going to disagree, especially with those for whom the citizens of a town are asking to bear the burden of change. Being that there is no distinct criteria for determining the specific character of a place, despite a long history of attempting to do just that, it should not be a determining factor in policy decisions.
Is character not associated with preservation? Do we not have committees and commissions to do the work of preserving character? Perhaps the conundrum of character should be left to preservationists.
Sources:
Foucault, Michel, “The Order of Things: An Archeology of the Human Sciences,” New York, Vintage Books, 1994
Lavin, Sylvia, “Quatremere de Quincy and the Invention of a Modern Language of Architecture,” Cambridge, MIT Press, 1992
Thenhaus, Clark, “Unresolved Legibility in Residential Types,” Applied Research and Design, 2019.
The writer is an architect and a member of the Great Barrington Planning Board.
