A personal interpretation of the Lamp of Memory by John Ruskin

Posted on November 12, 2013

Introduction

In this essay I shall relate to the Lamp of Memory which is the sixth of the
Seven Lamps of Architecture John Ruskin wrote in 1849. I am interested in
exploring until what level are the thoughts written by Ruskin still actual today. I
have divided the essay into different parts so that a more specific understanding
with our times can be drawn.

At a first glance, Ruskins writing may seem very far from todays general
thinking but as one starts to read through the chapter, one gets a feeling that
actually there are quite a number of things that relate to the world today in an
almost direct way.

Many of the themes Ruskin talks about are timeless and universal. By this I mean
that he bases himself upon a moral matrix from which he develops his ideas. I
will reinterpret this matrix and examine until what extent can his reflection be
taken into consideration today.

The analysis of specific points in Ruskins text will conclude in my personal

interpretation of Ruskin thoughts and until what point memory plays a role in
contemporary architecture.

fig.1 John Ruskin

fig.1 John Ruskin

John Ruskins historical context

In order to fully understand the reasoning behind Ruskins thoughts, one needs
to be aware of the social, political, and environmental context in which he lived.

John Ruskin was born in 1819 and passed away in 1900. Living in the midst of the
industrial revolution, Ruskin was against the heavy industrial production that was
carried at the time. Due to this he developed an interest in the Gothic revival. He
writes,

I use the word Gothic in the most extended sense as broadly opposed to
classical, that it admits of a richness of record altogether unlimited. (chapter VI,
VII)

At the peak of Romanticism, at a time in which national identity was primal

importance, John Ruskin argued that the minute and multitudinous sculptural
decorations of gothic architecture afford means of expressing, either
symbolically or literally, all that need be known of national feeling or
achievement. (chapter VI, VII)

His influence ranged from inspiring the Arts and Crafts movement to the
creation of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings by William Morris.
Ruskin was completely against restoration, in fact, he was to such level that he
asserts,

it is impossible, as impossible as to raise the dead, to restore anything that has

ever been great or beautiful in architecture. That which I have above insisted
upon as the life of the whole, that spirit which is given only by the hand and eye
of the workman, never can be recalled. (chapter VI, XVIII)

John Ruskins considerations are totally opposite of his contemporary, Viollet Le

Duc, which argued that the restoration of a building

is not to maintain it, repair or rebuild it, but to re-establish it in a complete state
that may never have existed at a particular moment

After having briefly examined his historical context and opinion let us examine a
couple of particular points in the text of John Ruskin.

fig. 2 - Bridge to Angkor Thom, Cambodia, c. 1100 - one can immediately

perceive which parts have been restored. This reconstruction does not really add
any value, instead, the value is reduced.
fig. 2 Bridge to Angkor Thom, Cambodia, c. 1100 one can immediately
perceive which parts have been restored. This reconstruction does not really add
any value, instead, the value is reduced.

Representation of architecture into the future

In stating that there are two strong conquerors of the forgetfulness of men,
Poetry and Architecture (chapter VI, II), John Ruskin marks the main
importance of the theme to be treated, memory. Immediately after making this
statement he concludes that architecture is more powerful than poetry as it
includes

not only what men have thought and felt, but what their hands have handled,
and their strength wrought, and their hands have held, all the days of their life.
(chapter VI, II)

Its quite romantic to think that future generations after ours will consider our
buildings as sacred apart from a very few which we might probably consider
historically important. But what makes a building historically important? It is
certain that John Ruskin interpreted Joseph Paxtons Crystal Palace as an antispiritual building. The industrial use of glass and steel were not the expression
of workers craft but the demonstration of the large possibilities that industry and
the diverse use of materials brought to building technology. But Paxtons building
even though not existing anymore is a constant reference when one thinks of the
industrial revolution whatever John Ruskin might have though of it.

Referring to the Crystal Palace one can conclude that even if buildings are not
built as monuments, they can become of historical importance simply because of
their technological features or any other distinctive feature.

This brings us to discuss that buildings should be constructed upon the spirit of
their age in order to make the representation of architecture into the future the
most honest.

Zeitgeist

In the Lamp of Memory, Ruskins main goal is to make us aware of the fact that
architects should build according to the spirit of the age in which they live in. All
decoration used should be relevant to the epoch the building is constructed. He
writes,

Better the rudest work that tells a story or records a fact, than the richest
without meaning. There should not be a single ornament put upon great civic
buildings, without some intellectual intuition (chapter VI, VII)

It is not only important to build in a way that respects the social, economical, and
technological needs of an epoch but also to build in a way that these can be

remembered by future generations when looking and feeling a building in their

respective time. This is why Ruskin describes two duties of architecture that
mark the existence of architecture with a constant relationship with its past,

the first, to render architecture of the day, historical; and, the second, to
preserve, as the most precious of inheritances, that of past ages. (chapter VI,
II)

Today architecture seems to have lost its ability to project the present time into
the future. Many buildings are built as a mere expression of power or an actual
stylistic trend but do not take into consideration the local climate, local traditions
or the or the increasing general interest in the resolution of environmental issues
that are affecting our world.

It is true that only future generations will be able to fully judge the extent of our
will to care for them. An honest evaluation of the current situation in which the
interests of the globalized and egoistic world are give us a close approximation
to what their conclusion might be. We can certainly affirm that an architecture
that responds to the needs of memory is for sure not in the general interest of
society today.

fig. 2 Allison and Peter Smithson, Robin Hood Gardens, London, 1969-72
probably will provide a memory of community life but certainly not of the
personal character of a person living inside it.
fig. 2 Allison and Peter Smithson, Robin Hood Gardens, London, 1969-72
probably will provide a memory of community life but certainly not of the
personal character of a person living inside it.

Craft as a materialization of memory

In our world today, most of the things we consume and use have been mostly
made by machines. The value in itself that work represents through skill craft has
has almost disappeared. Craft, in the capitalistic world in which we live in, seems
to be measured only by the amount of profit that a person can do. The skill which
one acquires by doing a work doesnt seem to matter any more.

The arts and crafts vision of making craft almost the scope of work can rarely be
appreciated in our heavily industrialized world. The memory that manual labour
provokes seems to have lost its presence in our minds. Society today does not
nurture from the past and neither tries to direct the future. It only lives to
administer the present. This is totally contrary to what Ruskin declares:

when we build, let us think that we build for ever. Let it not be for present
delight, not for present use alone; let it be such work as our descendants will
thank us for, and let us think, as we lay stone upon stone, that a time is to come
when those stones will be held sacred because our hands have touched them,
and that men will say as they look upon the labour and rough substance of them,
See! this our fathers did for us. (chapter VI, IX)

We can today see that we have not abided with Ruskins reasoning. Many of the
construction research going on today does not take into consideration craft as a
portrayer of the culture of a place. Today craft is being systematically being
destroyed by the humongous industrialization which is appropriating all that
there is to build.

The main objective of industry is and has been to optimize production under all
costs and this has inevitably lead to the reduction and almost complete
elimination of craft. The main problem of this unstoppable search for
maximization of production is that in the long term future generations will not
have any objects which carry this spiritual value that Ruskins speaks about.

Nature

The grandeur of the Jura in Switzerland which causes such a fascination to Ruskin
in the beginning of the chapter makes us feel humble and tiny in relation to the
forces of nature and time. Ruskin does this so that we are in a way purified from
all of our egos so that then the lesson that Ruskin is trying to teach us can be
fully understood.

Fascination towards nature today seems to have concentrated in a completely

different realm; that of the power that humans have over nature. Society todays
thinks that it can control nature when indeed it is totally dependent from it.

What physical memory of nature will we leave for future generations if we

continue to appropriate everything in nature for the simple fact of not having
consideration towards the generations to come.

Work towards a brighter future

In Ruskins work we can see how Ruskin marks as a fundamental importance the
moral responsibility of working not only for our present needs but to build and
act always towards the future.

God has lent us the earth for our life, it is a great entail. It belongs as much to
those who are to come after us, and whose names are already written in the
book of creation, as to us, and we have no right, by anything that we do or
neglect, to involve them in unnecessary penalties, or deprive them of benefits
which it was in our power to bequeath. And this is more because it is one of the
appointed conditions of the labor of men that, in proportion to the time between
the seed-sowing and the harvest, is the fulness of the fruit; and that generally,
therefore, the farther off we place our aim, and the less we desire to be
ourselves the witness of what we have labored for, the more wide and rich will be
the measure of our success. (chapter VI, IX)

The though above was completely visionary at its time and can we can find a
direct relationship with the desirable way of acting of society today. Adopting this
humble existence is something to be done urgently today if we want future
generations to be proud of the decisions we made for their bright future.

True perfection of cvil and domestic buildings

In the third section of the Lamp of Memory, John Ruskin affirms that

it is in becoming memorial and monumental that a true perfection is attained by

civil and domestic buildings (chapter VI, II)

It is interesting to see how Ruskin associates a common factor of perfection to

two completely different building typologies. He treats the dignity of a small
house with the same respect he would treat an opera. He is interested in the way
a building has a value of its own due to its age. He writes,

the greatest glory of a building is not in its stones, or in its gold. Its glory is in
its age, and in that deep sense of voicefulness, of stern watching, of mysterious
sympathy, nay, even of approval or condemnation, which we feel in walls that
have long been washed by the passing waves of humanity. (chapter VI, X)

The value of age that Ruskin refers to is later on developed in a more systematic
approach by Alois Riegl with the will of organizing the different values that time
has in a building. He defined a diverse set of values which can be applied to a

monument or building in order to decide how and if a restoration is to be done.

Of course Ruskin would not approve of Riegls theories as he firmly states:

it is again no question of expediency or feeling whether we shall preserve the

buildings of past time or not. We have no right whatever to touch them. They are
not ours. They belong partly to all the generations of mankind who are to follow
us. (chapter VI, XX)

Ruskin thought of restoration as the

the most total destruction which a building can suffer: a destruction out of
which no remnants can be gathered: a destruction accompanied with false
description of the thing destroyed. (chapter VI, XVIII)

Ruskin treats every single dwelling as a small monument which commemorates

the pride of the owner and explains that living in a house is something which we
should be totally grateful for.

I say that if men lived like men indeed, their houses would be temples temples
which we should hardly dare to injure, and in which it would make us holy to be
permitted to live (chapter VI, X)

The specific type of memory that a house can portray of his first owner probably
works in a single house but not in a contemporary housing development, which
is the place where most of the people that live in a city inhabit. What type of
individuality or real familiarity with the first owner is there in an apartment
building? Huge social housing developments contradict Ruskins statement on
the way domestic memory is to be passed from parents to children.

In an housing complex what is the most evident are not the ideas of the owner of
an apartment but the design objectives of the architect. This is why design today
should try to be more participative. The future owners of their home should have
the right to decide on basic aspects of their homes. Utilizing technologies that
are available to us today, designers can collaborate with clients in order to
understand in a more direct way what people need and want.

Conclusion

Most of the world today is composed by extreme poverty and lack of education.
Its the combination of these two factors that make the stabilization of memory

into buildings which respond to the true needs of our society impossible. The
construction of a house in a third world country which is consequent with the
culture of a place is not even an option as the main objective is to construct a
simple shelter by the most convenient means.

These economical and social issues constitute no excuse for governments to

collaborate on stabilizing an ongoing agenda which looks into the future and
emphasizes the importance of making architecture that responds to the actual
economic and social needs in a way that culture is respected.

Manual labor has almost been eliminated in first world countries. Manual labour
is not seen as a skill but merely as an asset which one can buy at different rates
in various countries. This is why the economies of countries which at the time of
Ruskin, functioned basically on industry now provide services and their workforce
is in another continent.

Reading such a visionary text today is very inspiring and makes one question
about the way society as a whole should behave. Ruskins text demonstrates to
us that memory exists as a link between the past present and future. Its this link
which identifies us as a society and even though many times it may seem
impossible to project the present into the future we need to remain optimistic
and always try to act in a benevolent and moral way. This way of acting will
almost automatically ensure that the memory we are projecting by our daily
existence will be one of care and collaboration towards the future.