Friday, April 2, 2010

The lighthouse


The lighthouse occupies a grey area in our understanding of architecture in its relation to society. Reyner Banham asserts that architectures purpose has since its inception been to organize materially and symbolically social life . Modernism, Banham says has signaled the end of this era and the inability of architecture to affect social forms, thus, becoming mere containers for the processing of information and networks . The lighthouse as an architectural phenomenon straddles both of these definitions, yet does not conform directly to any. The lighthouse is outside of the direct networks and communications through which economic, political, and ideological systems organize social life, however, it serves to mediate and organize these networks. That is to say it does not exert a direct organizational framework upon society. Furthermore, it does not act as a container for the processing of information, as Reyner’s analysis of modernist structures indicates. It is pure information, or viewed through a semiotic lens, an indexical sign, it announces “Land!” at a fixed point in time and space.

Therefore, the architecture of this lighthouse, situated as it were on a mound of earth, extended even higher through its elevated form, merely acts to extend the range of this symbol across space. Thus, the architecture serves no function other than to sustain the production of an exterior symbol. It’s interior and exterior articulations, in architectural terms, are dictated by the optimal accommodation of the infrastructure necessary for the production of light and its extended range. This is illustrated by the shift in light house designs; from those accommodating a lighthouse keeper in the times of oil powered lights, to the streamlined designs of computer powered, self sufficient electronic lighthouses. The very necessity for structure and extensive infrastructure in the production of light lays bare the limitations of mans ability to control the elements and harness natural forces of light. Furthermore, the very need for light as symbol to announce the presence of land mass presents the limitations in mans understanding of navigation, and the impotency of maps. This however, has largely been done away with in an era of GPS locating, which still in times of cloudy weather fails to solve this problem.

The lighthouse is also interesting in that it indicates mans inadequate means for representing materially the complexity of natural phenomena. It is an establishment of fixed landmarks which reduce and delineate the unknown immeasurable geography of darkness to a quantified representation space. It is like a map in that it attempts to abstractly represent complex and variegated forms (the shoreline) through a single fixed point. This single point is inadequate in reconstructing for the sailor the contours of the shoreline, but instead acts, as a weather report, as a reference point. It signals the extreme limitations of the land mass and announces ‘here a light stand, this light stands on land,’ while the shape of the land behind this marker is still unknown, more so the height and variance of the sea floor. Thus, unable to do much else the sailor proceeds with caution weary of coming fluctuations in sea floor heights and approaching shore lines. It thus delineates the landscape and creates boundaries through symbols.

Perhaps more than anything else, the lighthouse represents capitalism, specifically its systems of import and export. Heidegger asserts that modern politics directs itself though speed and mobility and furthermore that modern capitalism is highly dependent of the constant movement of goods across national and international boundaries. Built and maintained by local governments, lighthouses have been for millennia integral parts of a vast network of private and public exchanges via water based transportation. They act as a road sign on a highway providing a reference point through which a destination can found, while not indicating directly any fixed destination other than itself. By providing such a reference, the light house facilitates and guides the speedy and constant movement of goods which is integral to modern capitalism. As well, by existing as such an important node, the lighthouse becomes inextricably linked to the broader economic networks of Toronto, the Greater Golden Horseshoe, the province, the country, and the world; or seen in another light its connection to the railroads, the highways, and the airports. It is a point in a tight web which would be inconceivable without it. Furthermore, it reinforces Heidegger’s notion that the city is no longer a state but that a state is made up of cities; it reasserts the importance of the extensive economic, political, and social ties that exist between cities and regions and the intricate organization of these nodes of production storage and dissipation in a global economy.

This economic role fulfilled by lighthouses has since the advent of the GPS become almost negligible. Boats of almost every scale have access to GPS systems as their lowered prices have made them available to the general public and industries alike. As such, the lighthouse has lost its purpose; no one looks to it anymore to guide them to land, as even the sea floor is mappable by these systems. Thus, the lighthouse loses its weight as an indexical symbol and becomes more of a floating signifier and a multitude of varying associations permeate; nostalgia for past technologies, a history of seafaring, or quaint seaside communities to name a few. It is no longer architecture with a definitive function, as this function is no longer required of it; it announces something to an indifferent world. In a sense, it becomes art.

The lighthouse is a particularly interesting architectural phenomenon. It straddles multiple definitions of space and transcends them to become architecture as pure information. Furthermore this information attempts to abstract and represent a variegated mass through a single fixed point. This production of symbol has been integral to facilitating the constant movement of goods which is essential to modern capitalism. However, now in the age of the GPS this role has been largely lost and it has become a floating signifier, indicating quaint seaside towns more than the complexity of virtuosity of capitalism and trade.

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