Innovation Enigmas

Abstract

What is new? What is truly innovative and what falls short? How to promote innovation without going over the top, without thinking about novelty for novelty's sake? How to make use of tradition without adopting historicist or simply reactionary viewpoints?

Innovation as a goal has been around for quite some time now, and in every circle from business to academe, through medicine, technology, finance, gastronomy, fashion, architecture, town planning and so on. Nowadays every specialist field and discipline uphold innovation as practically the only possible way forward for our rapidly changing societies, economies and cultures.

Like many other concepts, innovation has gradually become commonplace, and the need to innovate is rarely questioned. Innovate for the sake of innovating? However, the question is not about recognising, yet again, the need to innovate, but identifying the justification, method, cost and scope of the planned innovation. Innovation is always deemed to be beneficial, and yet there are those who query the effects of certain forms of innovation, the ways in which they are disseminated and their more or less literal adoption in different contexts.

In the financial world some of the innovations behind the developments in international capitalism are widely questioned. For example, in recalling the disastrous innovations introduced in the sector just before the collapse of Lehman Brothers, Joseph E. Stiglitz remarked, "Given that financial institutions had been attracting the best and brightest from around the world, one would have expected nothing less [than innovativeness]. But, upon closer inspection, it became clear that most of this innovation involved devising better ways of scamming others, manipulating markets without getting caught, and exploiting market power." The net contribution to society of all this "innovation" was negative. Nevertheless, there are clearly other types of innovation that can be described unreservedly as progress,  such as technological, medical and other type of advances that have a positive impact on the quality of life in general.

Although there are few analogies between the worlds of economics and architecture or town planning, our field nevertheless faces similar issues. Thus, despite the existence of historiographical interpretations of a structuralist nature or, at the other end of the spectrum, interpretations focused exclusively on the contributions of the finest architects and experts, there are others that attempt to analyse and question the innovative approaches adopted at certain points in time, and shed light on their consequences, costs and benefits.

In his groundbreaking critical histories, Kenneth Frampton has praised the functional, technological and formal contributions of the Modern Movement, but he has also denounced the movement for its obsession with technology, referring for example to the enormous and relatively unbridled impact of cars on the configuration and urban landscape of our cities. He has also criticised historians for being "imperialistic and Eurocentric", for ignoring the innovative elements have been introduced in the other half of the world and continue to be implemented in different ways. Clearly, those architectures and urban forms may serve as models, especially at a time when certain western models are in decline.

In Absorbing Modernity: 1914-2014, Rem Koolhaas reflects on how different countries have responded to the "forces of modernism" over the last century. He also distances himself from the prominence of renowned architects, placing the focus of the debate on the culture of building and urban planning. In their reinterpretation of modern urban planning, some critics have also advocated the virtues of "shorter stories"—as opposed to "grand narratives" (of people like Lewis Mumford and Peter Hall)—praising innovation in the ideas behind urban strategies, plans and projects and their diffusion (Stephen Ward). Others recall that just as dangerous as urban planners with no historical vision are those who have a unilateral vision of a city's history (Michael Hebbert), which obviously also applies to architects in relation to the history of architecture.

Innovation and tradition are key words in practically every discipline, including architecture and urban planning. A new approach to the modern project should explore both the valid contemporary components as well as the obsolete ones. Modernism in architecture and town planning was based on radical innovations in relation to housing and urban forms, for example through the elimination of forms developed in the 1930s and the refusal to renovate street configurations with these proposals. The loss of quality and the desolation of many public spaces in our cities are not only the corollary of the decline of sociability: some blame must be apportioned to those obsessively radical and innovative gambles. However, the refusal to embrace thoughtful innovation and the “Krier-like” tendency to seek refuge in historicism are probably at odds with the quest for new, contemporary living spaces.

In short, it is crucial that we re-examine the benefits and costs, the successes and failures, the advances and the excesses of innovation, because at this point in time we no longer trust single versions of events,  and much less endogamous narratives—in other words, those that only interest architects and a handful of other people.

Javier Monclús Fraga