By Douglas Kruger
Picture: ROB CURRIE
IN Japan, beer is cheaper than bottled water. That’s how you know you’ve achieved peak civilisation.
Architecture is another sign. The buildings we erect around us, the beauty we imbue in them, these are easily among the chief metrics of the spiritual health of a society.
Think of it this way: no one snaps shots of lifeless office parks. Blocks of flats in the depressing brutalist style seldom make it onto social media pages. But people from around the world flock to places like Barcelona, Amsterdam, or the bits of Paris that haven’t been torched, and hungrily document the finest examples of classical design.
Beauty matters. Beautification matters.
I once posted a photo of a pretty road in Jersey. Just a road. Immediately one of my friends overseas commented with envy: “Not a single scrap of litter in sight!” A small thing, perhaps, but conspicuous if you live in places that don’t take beauty seriously.
And it’s not just a “lack of ugliness” that elevates our island, the low levels of litter or the near absence of the ubiquitous graffiti that spoiled Berlin. Jersey is also alive with active displays of embellishment. If you grew up here, it might not seem like a big deal that flowers hang in planters along our high streets. But it’s actually unusual. And utterly lovely.
That said, we may have an opportunity before us. The hospital’s going ahead! Hurray!
Could we make it beautiful?
The old one looks like a Soviet block. Dirty, square, dark, bleak, grimy, dull and depressing. I imagine it goes around in a trench coat, kicking puppies for fun.
And I’m aware that the new design already exists, probably to a high level of completion. The drawings look clean, modern and inoffensive. But perhaps not what we might call “achingly beautiful”. Yet where is it written that a functional building cannot also be aesthetically pleasing? Ever been to St Pancras train station?
By no means am I even beginning to suggest big changes. After all these years of faff, please, just build the darn thing.
But some elements don’t require significant structural changes. Take decorative façades. To a large extent, modern tech enables us to just plonk them on the outer walls, using silly putty and a ladder. Personally, I like the way London effortlessly blends the ancient and the elegant with the hyper-modern. The Louvre pulls off the same trick, rather splendidly. Our new hospital’s design is very modern. It can also be beautiful.
I spent some time researching “beauty in architecture”, and learned a few surprising things. For instance, there are people who actively oppose it. Most seem to be postmodernist intellectuals. They favour brutalism, minimalism and stark modernism, styles often regarded as ugly compared to classical design.
Their starting point is to argue that because beauty is subjective, there is no point discussing it further. I agree that we shouldn’t discuss it further. Leave them out of the design meetings. They can stay home and read Nietzsche.
Instead, look for those who agree with the simple statement, “Beauty is good for the soul”, and also, “Yes, it would be a good thing to have a beautiful hospital.” They’re likely the same people who put out flowers.
There’s a long history behind this debate. The quick version is this: people used to believe that beauty resided within objects. We built cathedrals, stately Edwardian homes, and elegant bridges spanning chasms, because we thought it good to imbue things with grandeur. We built them to endure, for the enjoyment of subsequent generations.
Then we switched to a new idea. Beauty was entirely subjective. Art could be a toilet, or a can of soup.
The results were strange. The more an architect could subvert classical design ideas, the “cleverer” he looked to his peers. The cheaper he could make it, the better for those holding the purse strings. These attitudes ushered in a period of global civil uglification, that nobody ever wanted, and only intellectuals admire, like a private joke in a dark language.
Finally, a backlash caused philosophers to rethink the complex topic, pushing back against postmodernism. Most recently, the late Sir Roger Scruton pointed out that beauty does contain properties we can recognise. Firstly, it pleases us. Secondly, it is apparent that one thing can be more beautiful than another. And thirdly, we give our attention to things because they are beautiful. Taken together, this indicates that beauty is by no means a meaningless idea, even if its contours and parameters are difficult to articulate.
The topic gets even weirder. Several studies have found that buildings favoured by modern architects are among the least favoured by the general public, and vice versa. Also, the longer an architect formally studies their craft in academia, the greater the rift between what they like, and what the public considers beautiful.
This poses an odd problem. We need architects. But we specifically need the ones who came out of it, like a cult.
We need them even more once we discover that public buildings affect psychology, quite dramatically. Loads of sharp edges on public buildings make us feel anxious. So do tight spaces. Uprightness and stately lines promote awe, alongside a sense of stability, and enduring peace.
When surveyed, almost everyone prefers beautiful, old classic buildings to just about anything new.
At a practical level, we seem to favour symmetry. We feel uncomfortable around asymmetry. We like fractals, as in nature. We also love details and ornaments, which create a sense of organized complexity, and which humanise through recognisable, anthropomorphised figures, such as statues or crests.
We do not like spikes, or buildings that lean awkwardly one way or another, or sticky out pipes, though the one exception to this is poles with waving flags, which we seem to find deeply gratifying.
And we love loads of green lawns, and the splash of colour provided by flowers, so perhaps let the Parks Department have at it. And walls designed to reflect sunlight in stately playfulness, rather than hulking monstrosities sulking in their own gloom. We adore big stretches of water. If they include movement, such as in fountains, we can be moved to joy.
Jersey is a tourist destination. This is a big installation, intended to last a long time. It’s also, by nature, a place where people go to “feel better”, and beauty is no small part of that. And we are not a grimy suburb of Chicago. We are a breathtakingly beautiful island off the coast of France.
So, while I’m not proposing our hospital should resemble a cathedral, I do contend that there is no reason ancient Greeks and Romans should have lived with more aesthetically pleasing public infrastructure than what we can achieve in 2025. The consideration of beauty need not be overriding. It shouldn’t be prioritised to the point of bankruptcy. But it deserves to be one competing consideration.
It takes a long time to build replacement hospitals in Jersey. Let’s make this one special.
Douglas Kruger is an author and speaker. His books are all available via Amazon and Audible
