Architectural form combines both instrument and emblem in the history of architecture. Its instrumental role is that of allowing certain human action to take place within it, which the building will either encourage or limit in specific ways. Its emblematic aspect is the way in which the building’s imagery and quality of surface and space enhance these activities and make them memorable. Great architecture usually holds these two elements in an integrated balance.

As the 19th century progressed, the emblematic side of architecture became diffused. It was under threat from both the new technological building world which ascribed little importance to it and from an accompanying loss of faith in the need for “one true style”. Lightly adopted styles were used with considerable abandon, often only reflecting a weak association of ideas, such as “Classical” for learning or “Gothic” for religion. Many were troubled by this and fine architects felt hopelessly lost. “In what style should we build?” moaned one German, and the question summed up the dilemma. In England, A. W. N. Pugin and then John Ruskin argued for true principles in design and moral rules for honest building. Their exemplar was medieval ecclesiastical society and its buildings; true Gothic, they believed, would be an appropriate reflection of an honest modern society. But this approach to design, in which it was treated as a moral issue (an attitude which reappeared later in Modernism) could not ultimately prevail, and the so-called Battle of the Styles continued to be fought.

The engineering exploitation of new situations, however, was self-confident enough to ignore any concern for cultural reference. The completely new forms, such as stations, exhibition halls, exchanges and arcades, which were unprecedented in spatial terms as well as rich in constructional ideas, were virtually drained of architecture’s traditional emblematic role. More importantly, they were usually also rather crude as instruments.

Architects, on the other hand, sometimes designed a brilliant instrument, but went too far with the emblematic content. Charles Garnier’s Opera in Paris, for example, is a magnificent and complex articulation of a difficult requirement, but the building’s lavish ornament is at odds with its precisely articulated form.

This looseness of emblem which decorated so much 19th-century architecture is seen both in the fashion for the exotic styles brought back from the colonies and in the exported imperial culture. Through the century Britain built in Bombay an “Ionic” mint (1829), a “Doric and Corinthian” town hall (1825-33), “Early English” high courts, a “Renaissance” telegraph office, a “Venetian gothic” secretariat (1874), a “15th-century French decorated” university hall and finally a “14th-century Flanders” library designed by Scott. Meaningless fancy-dress, it was particularly tasteless, given India’s own ancient cultural heritage.