Architecture and Modernity : A Critique

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level of feelings and emotional relations: “Thus the metropolitan type of man—
which of course exists in a thousand individual variants—develops an organ protecting
him against the threatening currents and discrepancies of his external
environment which would uproot him. He reacts with his head instead of his heart.” 4
Simmel discerns a link between the dominance of rationality in the social
sphere and the money economy; 5 both systems rely upon purely functional relations
among people and things. In the money economy, exchange value takes precedence
over use value. This means that the particular character of separate objects is reduced
to something that is purely quantitative: objects derive their value not from
their inherent quality, but from their quantitative market value. For Simmel it is clear
that an analogy can be drawn with the field of interpersonal relations: here too, he argues,
emotional relationships used to depend on the individuality of the people concerned,
while in the rational relations that are typical of the metropolis, people are
treated like numbers. In relations of this sort, individuals are interchangeable entities:
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Money is concerned only with what is common to all: it asks for the exchange
value, it reduces all quality and individuality to the question:
How much? All intimate emotional relations between persons are
founded in their individuality, whereas in rational relations man is reckoned
with like a number, like an element which is in itself indifferent. 6
Simmel nevertheless maintains that the anonymity and indifference of the metropolis
do not imply an impoverishment compared with the seclusion and security of the
small town or village. For the reserve of city dwellers toward each other and toward
their environment provides a context which allows for a much higher degree of personal
freedom than is known elsewhere.
According to Simmel, there is yet another feature that is characteristic of life
in the metropolis: the increasing fissure between “objective” and “subjective” spirit.
Objective culture—the ensemble of achievements in the fields of science, technology,
scholarship, and art—accumulates at such a speed that it is impossible for the
individual, concerned with the development of his own subjective culture, to keep
pace with it. The division of labor means that individuals develop in a way that is increasingly
specialized and one-track. This discrepancy is particularly apparent in the
metropolis, where objective culture is embodied in institutional buildings and educational
organizations, in infrastructures and administrative bodies, and where it is clear
that the personality of the individual is no match for this overwhelming presence.
Implicit in the picture that Simmel draws is a fundamental criticism of Hermann
Bahr’s expectations. Bahr assumed that art and culture would be joined in a
new synthesis with science and technology. Simmel’s analysis suggests that this
hope of a new harmony has little basis. Bahr, one might argue, represents the programmatic
and pastoral concept of modernity that was also at a premium in the modern
movement. Simmel, on the other hand, demonstrates that social reality might