What's Wrong with the Primitive Hut?

[...] This monotonous fable is recounted at the beginning of the first chapter of Laugier’s Essai sur l’architecture (1753) and, consequently, at the very beginning of modern architecture. In its sublime lack of inspiration, the fable is impeccable: no antagonists, no encounters, no drama, no plot, no sex, no anecdotes, no noise, no ambiguity, no jokes. There is just primitive man and nature, nothing else. Primitive man is perfectly alone, just like Crusoe on his deserted island. His problems are limited to meteorological conditions: the sun’s heat, rain, humidity. Still, as silly as it may at first seem, this fable is not all that innocent. Some of its curious presuppositions are crucial for the understanding of modernism. Indeed, according to Laugier, primitive man has needs but no companions, and he possesses a logic (a pretty utilitarian one) but not a language. The atmosphere is remarkably silent: in the tale, architecture is born in complete isolation, without words, without lies. Consequently, for Laugier, architecture is just a matter of shelter. Functionalism is the logical consequence of these (quite surreal) assumptions. Houses come before temples. And so private architecture is the model for public architecture. Pragmatism comes before ritual. Structure comes before space. The fundamental element of architecture is the pillar, not the wall, and its fundamental device is the section, not the plan. Against all evidence, engineering precedes rhetoric. Laugier’s narration of the supposed beginnings of architecture anticipates Adam Smith’s minimal recounting of the supposed origin of exchange. In Wealth of Nations (1776), Smith describes this unlikely sober Urszene: “one man . . . has more of a certain commodity than he himself has occasion for, while another has less. The former consequently would be glad to dispose of, and the latter to purchase, a part of this superfluity” (Book I, 4).