However, t he luminescence of gold, though important to the Byzantines,
actually came second to the lustre of marble, at least in some accounts.
Procopius wrote of the Hagia Sophia that 'one might say that its interior
is not illuminated from vvithout by the sun, but that the radiance comes
into being within it'. But while 'the whole ceiling is overlaid with pure
gold, which adds glory to the beauty[ ... ] the light reflected from the
stones prevails, shining out in rivalry with the gold'. Gold then was
clearly not always the dernier cri in luxury, even in Byzantium,
and we have here an early suggestion t hat gilding is a superficial
ornament to the essential body of the building, perhaps surprising
given its authorship.
Gold has also long been prized for its heavenliness in Asia, particularly
in Buddhist architecture. The use of gold on temple roofs is a particularly
telling employment of its reflective qualities: this strategy doubles the
light of heaven, brings it down to Earth and captures it in architectural
form. Golden temples continue to be built today, such as the Dhammakaya
Cetiya near Bangkok, which opened at the turn of the millennium.
However , the controversy surrounding t his huge building - which can
seat 10,000 monks around the central pagoda - hints at one of the
enduring difficulties with the use of such splendid materials for r eligious
purposes. As well as its material qualities, one of the undeniable reasons
for the architectural use of gold is its r arity and, therefore, its expense.
This inextricably intert~rines spiritual and worldly power.
Reactions to this nexus h ave been enduring and tempestuous;
for instance, the mendicant orders, founded on principles of renunciation,
were tangled in long justificatory debates about grandeur as their
endow1nents grew and, with them, the richness of their churches.
In the West, gold tended to vanish from architectural decoration with
the development of perspective, but to reduce the geneaology of this
phenomenon to this single origin would be insufficient and idealistic,
especially in t he face of the massive social and economic changes
occurring in European society at this time. While the material properties
of gold that encouraged its architectur al employment haven't changed,
its social valorisation has - and as Lenin anticipated, it may do so again.
"'"Tb.ile its spiritual use abated, gold continued to be employed for
secular purposes in the West whenever imperial splendour was to be
connoted. TheCa d'Oro in Venice - another golden house - had at first
a gilded facade, the r eflection of which in the canal must have had
a similarly entrancing effect to t hat of the Golden Temple in Amritsar or
Kinkaku-ji in Kyoto. The model for t he Contarinis, who built the palazzo,
was to be found much closer, however, in the facade mosaics of San Marco.
This adoption of Byzantine religious tropes, even by a family as elevated
as the Contarinis (they produced eight doges), must surely have been
the cause of some mutterings ·when the house was completed in 1430.
And in later palaces, built in locations less accustomed to public
ostentation, gilding was generally reserved for interiors. The richness
of Baroque spaces such as the hall of mirrors, and of neoclassical interiors
such as Robert Adam's decorations of Syon House, was intended only
for the eyes of the aristocracy and not for the envious masses.
In a bourgeois era, however, gilding escaped into the street once more,
especially on stately pleasure domes such as opera houses. And although
Beaux-Arts pomposity was rejected by its critics, golden accents were
reproduced on J ugendstil structures like the Secession building in Vienna.
But this was a last gasp; gold, smothered by moral considerations,
was extinguished in architecture. That is, until t he proliferation of mirror
glass in the work of late Modernists in the 1970s (the technique had been
invented by Roche and Dinkeloo, who "\Vere allegedly inspired by aviator
sunglasses), and that of Postmodernists such as Hans Hollein. There may
be other forces at work behind this turn of events, but it is clear that
the triumphant return of gold, embodied most recently in OMA's
spectacular Fondazione Prada, corresponds to the return of oligarchy.
The last is a typical exhibition of cynical frankness from Koolhaas -
t he relics of industry, transformed into a bank vault for blue-chip
investment pieces, then gilded like a mummy's mask.
Lenin's toilet is not here yet, but this funereality suggests it may not be
too long before we can say, in the words of the poet Johann Heinrich Voss:
'how splendidly your gilded shit-house gleams!'
(Opposite) the enormous
Dhammakaya Cetiya near
Bangkok, its central
pagoda covered in small
gilded buddhas, was
completed in 2000
(Above left) golden palm
trees in Hans Hollein's
1976 Austrian Travel
Agency in Vienna
(Below left) the towers
of the 1972 Campbell
Centre in Dallas by
Neuhaus & Taylor are clad
in mirror glass with a very
fine coating of real gold;
this reflects 90 per cent
of the sunlight hitting the
buildings, making them
significantly more
energy efficient than
conventionally
glazed towers
(Below) designed by OMA,
the Haunted House at the
Fondazione Prada in Milan
is covered in gold leaf
and holds the permanant
art collection