为了未来的怀旧

Nostalgia for the Future

历史的有效性不能仅仅停留在对过去的研究,以及评估各类遗产的价值或是遗产保护层面。作者认为,对历史的珍视不可避免地和人们对未来的期待有关。历史是没有经验可循的,因为历史的条件是不可复制的。历史真正的价值在于我们如何思考这些条件。回溯历史看起来是为了理解现在,但事实上回溯证明了某段时间的停留。文章提及了几个有关建筑物与人们的生活世界的故事以及它们与当代全球化之间的关系,从印度古吉拉特邦的地震到挪威、孟加拉国的种子库,从印度西孟加拉邦和中国的地产开发与城市化到印度南部的毛派叛乱。作者认为,建筑的过去和未来并不是对某种特定风格和经典历史的认可,也不完全依赖于建筑的拆除和建造。必须看到,建筑与时间性问题是有某种联系的,这种时间性与那些金融投机行为相悖,如房地产开发和强占土地,而金融投机恰恰是当今世界绝大多数建筑得以建造的原因。

The validity of history cannot rest merely on the study of the past, which is to say the story of ＇what happened,＇ of valuing various kinds of heritage, or its preservation. What we value in history, I argue, has to do inextricably with our expectations of the future. The lesson of history could well be that there are no lessons： no two conditions are replicable; and the real import of history is, really, to hone how we think about conditions. Even as we appear to look back to the past to seemingly understand our present, this retrospection in effect speaks to a certain inhabitation of time. In my essay I tell several stories about the built world and its relationship to contemporary globalization. Taking up stories of earthquakes and recovery in Gujarat, to seed banks in Norway and Bangladesh, to real estate deals and urbanization in West Bengal and China, to anaccount of a Maoist revolt in southern India, I argue that architecture＇s past and future cannot be linked to the validation of particular styles or canonical histories. As a speculative practice, the past and future of architecture does not entirely rely on the destruction and construction of buildings. We must see architecture also as a certain engagement with questions of time and temporality, a temporality that may well be at odds with the other stories of financial speculation - the real estate world and global iand- grabbing - through which real buildings, and today most buiidings, are being built.