Architects of Babel

by Thomas M. Dietz, appearing in Volume 49

It is a watershed moment in a reviewer’s career to assess the scholarship of a former coworker. It is also an honor, but this review can scarcely give credit to the full depth of the book’s content. Dugdale’s text is the second in Birkhäuser Verlag’s peer-reviewed series “Exploring Architecture.”

The series’ stated purpose is to target thematic subject matter “that is innovative and rigorous as well as engaging and accessible,” resulting in a handsomely formatted, abundantly illustrated volume that contributes to an increasing number of works analyzing architecture through Judeo-Christian Biblical narratives and religious scholarship.

The book’s primary subject matter will be esoteric to many. The early-twentieth-century Austrian painter, poet, and writer Uriel Birnbaum serves as the book’s core protagonist, leading Dugdale to cite from German language sources principally.

Among contemporary cultural commentators, the German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk’s account of modernity is noteworthy. Sloterdijk’s Spheres trilogy presents the modern condition as an anxiety arising from the void left by modern freedom. There is no longer a centering force to be found in the lived experience. From the self-induced anxiety of contemporary culture, one of the most enduring Biblical narratives returns. Modernity requires a new symbolic Tower of Babel, devoid of religious meaning, to fill its void.

Sloterdijk chose the city of Babylon as the focus of his architectural interest, which, in turn, led Dugdale to consider Birnbaum, a Jewish figure who underwent a profound religious transformation. Birnbaum also wrote the children’s book Der Kaiser und der Architekt, which receives a devoted chapter.

Birnbaum’s children’s book is modeled on the Biblical Tower of Babel, addressing the moral concerns of the scriptural narrative in light of the modern condition. Citing Sloterdijk, he writes: “humans are themselves an effect on the space they create.” This statement recalls the architectural hubris of Babel, which modernity’s secularizing condition, devoid of the inherited moral principles of religious belief, no longer seeks to curtail.    Birnbaum’s thought and religious conviction provide a foil to this secularizing condition.

Dugdale’s narrative is focused, explicitly addressing the archetypal role of the Tower of Babel, principally considered in light of Birnbaum’s thought and art. But the book’s clever titling betrays a lurking nemesis in the figure of Friedrich Nietzsche.

Recalling Nietzsche’s dictum that “God is dead and we have killed him,” modernity is thereby marked by the end of faith in God and the collapse of morality.

Again, citing Sloterdijk, he writes: “the architect bears responsibility for the shaping of God.” Later, when discussing new architectural discourses arising from modernity, the author cites Bruno Taut’s sentiment: “Greatly to be praised is the glory of architecture,” a celebratory exclamation once reserved for God.

Dugdale does not tie modernity to a key event. However, modernity finds its architectural impetus amid the turmoil of a European cultural landscape transformed by global conflict, and it is the Bauhaus Manifesto and Bruno Adler’s Utopia that reframe architecture’s ambitions as a new, non-metaphysical discipline. This gives rise to Dugdale’s idea of a “Babel Resurgent” as a distinctly modern concern.

Before addressing Birnbaum’s thought, the Tower of Babel is presented as a modern fascination, arising from the archaeological work of the architect Robert Koldewey in the early twentieth century. The subject has maintained an enduring interest following Koldeway’s preliminary projects, exhibitions, and writings on the topic. To illustrate this, the book outlines in detail exhibitions in Paris, Berlin, London, and New York alongside ongoing archaeological work in Iraq.

Dugdale next provides a full intellectual biography of Birnbaum, defined by his relationship to literary critic Ted Braak and author Friedrich Weinreb.

But the core of this section is an analysis of Birnbaum’s children’s book Der Kaiser und der Architekt, which tells the story of an emperor seeking the assistance of an architect to build a city of God, only to fail repeatedly. The consequences of this effort follow the Biblical narrative, and the architect grows steadily madder. In its conclusion, an actual heavenly city appears to destroy the architect’s final worldly attempt as a reminder of the need to accept God’s will.

The metaphorical implications are more profound within Dugdale’s historical narrative. Dugdale argues that modern architecture, with its focus on secular function, engineering prowess, and the creation of a “self-consciously modern, godless world,” mirrors Babel’s ambition. This approach ultimately leads to spiritual emptiness and a loss of moral authority.

The cathedral, by contrast, embodies a verticality oriented toward the Divine, symbolizing faith, mystery, and a connection to transcendent reality. Stripped of this meaning, only the form of the tower is preserved in modernity, reconfigured as the high-rise typology that marks the city’s lost centers.

The Tower of Babel serves as a metaphor for a full spectrum of twentieth-century architectural ills: utopianism, vanity, and ambition are all the result of the death of God.

In the end, the modern architect operates with a misplaced autonomous authority akin to the Tower of Babel’s builders, revealing the spiritual void that emerges from an emphasis on human ingenuity.

Employing both a historical and theological perspective, Dugdale’s text, therefore, is a worthy foundation for many further considerations of architecture.