tim anstey is an architect and Head of Research at KTH school of architecture. His research, which bridges between architectural history and architectural technology, focuses on the role of the architect in the process of creating the built environment. A key theme has been to examine how architects tend to be constituted as ‘authors’ in relation to ‘works’ (in the sense of artistic works), and the way in which such classifi cations must negotiate representative and technical horizons.

Anders Bergström is an Associate Professor in History and Th eory at the KTH School of Architecture, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm. He was trained as an architect at KTH (1996) and holds a PhD in History of Architecture from the same department (2001). His research focuses on the relation between architecture and the humanities. He is currently running a project on Stockholm Public Library and its relation to the American ideal of liberal education.

Katarina Bonnevier is an architect and researcher. She holds a Ph.D. in Critical Th eory of Architecture and is a lecturer and researcher at KTH School of Architecture, Stockholm. During 2010 she was a visiting professor at Haute Ecole Spécialisée de Suisse Occidentale (HES-SO) in Fribourg, Switzerland. Her research evolves around relations of architecture and power, especially from gender perspectives. She is frequently lecturing, moderating, exhibiting and participating in public programs within the fi elds of art, architecture, and urban planning.

Bojan Boric received a bachelor degree in architecture at the Irwin S Chanin School of Architecture, Cooper Union, New York in 1993 and in 1999 a masters degree in architecture and urban design at the GSAP Columbia University, New York. Since 1993 he has been a practicing architect working on a wide range of projects from interiors to housing, public and urban design projects internationaly. Since 1997 he runs his own practice besides teaching at universities in the New York City Metropolitan area. Today, he is responsible for the 4th and 5th year Urban Design Studio and holds the position of Masters Program Coordinator for the Urban Planning and Design program at KTH.

Elizabeth Hatz (Architect SAR/MSA) was introduced as professor at KTH in 1999 and has since then been teaching and leading Practice based research there through AKAD. She is also Associate Professor at UL School of Architecture, Limerick Ireland. She is on the board of Färgfabriken, for which she was co-founder in 1995, as President of SAR (now MSA). 2010 she curated ev+a, Irelands pre-eminent art event, and she was also involved with Ireland's exhibition at the Venice Architecture Biennale September 2010. She is part of the Strategic Board of the National Museum in Stockholm.

Penelope Haralambidou (Ph.D.) is an architect, researcher and Lecturer at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. Her work lies between architectural design, art practice and critical theory, and has been

exhibited internationally, including London, New York, Athens and the Venice Biennale of Architecture. She is author and editor of Th e Blossoming of Perspective: A Study (DomoBaal Editions, 2007) and has contributed writing on themes such as allegory, ‘fi gural theory’, the female nude and stereoscopy in architecture to a wide range of publications. Her research was short-listed for the prestigious RIBA President's Awards for Research in 2008.

Daniel Koch är arkitekt och forskare på Arkitekturskolan, KTH. Han bedriver arkitektarbete på kontoret Patchwork Architecture Laboratory, där han också är delägare, undervisar inom stadsbyggnad och arkitekturteori, och forskar om komplexa byggnader. Forskningen består i studier av bibliotek, varuhus och andra större arkitektoniska enheter, men också studier på stadsnivå. Under våren 2011 består undervisningen av urbanteori och vetenskapsmetodik, och forskningen fokuseras inom två projekt om byggnader fi nansierade av FORMAS och EU.

Margitta Kylberg, now retired, was the supervisor of the Archicture Library at KTH.

Helena Mattsson is an architect and a researcher based in Stockholm, Sweden. She is an Associate professor in Architecture / History and Th eory of Architecture at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. Her doctoral thesis was published 2004, Arkitektur och konsumtion: Reyner Banham och utbytbarhetens estetik (Architecture and consumption: Reyner Banham and the aesthetic of expendability). She has written extensively on architecture, art and culture, and is the editor of (with S-O Wallenstein) Swedish Modernism – Architecture, Consumption and the Welfare State (2010) and 1% (2006). Mattsson was in charge for a research project at the Museum of Architecture in Stockholm, Architecture and consumption in Sweden 1930 – 1970 (2005 to 2008). Mattsson is also an editor for the culture periodical SITE.

Jonas Runberger is an architect active in practice, research and education, currently based in Stockholm. His main interests involve the relation between design techniques, architectural production and experiential eff ect, with an emphasis on the impact of digital technology on both experimental and conventional practice. He is currently teaching in the Architectures of Interdisciplinarity Design studio at the KTH, directing Dsearch – a digital design environment within White Arkitekter and completing his PhD in the department of Project Communication at KTH.

Frida Rosenberg is a practicing architect, educator and researcher. She received her architecture degree in 2004 from Chalmers, Gothenburg and Yale University in 2007. She is a PhD Candidate in architecture at the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm and is a guest lecturer at the architecture school at Lund University since 2006.

Kalle Samuelsson läser tredje året på KTH Arkitekturskolan.

Contributors

1

3. The Act of Looking and Déjà vu: Notes on a ‘Figural Theory’Penelope Haralambidou

11 . On Matters Elizabeth Hatz

15 . Tall Tales, Queer HabitsKatarina Bonnevier

19 . The Architecture of Knowledge, The Library of the Future Daniel Koch

23. Treasures from the Archive: SpektrumAnders Bergström

27. Rethinking Urban Development in ChinaBojan Boric

35. Från Simmel till GoogleKalle Samulesson

43. Five Readings of Archigram 4Margitta Kylberg Helena Mattsson Daniel Norell Frida Rosenberg Jonas Runberger

53. Obelisks and Other Ephemera: Works, Artefacts, ProcessesTim Anstey

63 . The Death of Architecture, The Architecture of DeathLars Marcus

Contents

1594317891749

ISBN 978-91-7415-943-1

KTHA #2

tim anstey is an architect and Head of Research at KTH school of architecture. His research, which bridges between architectural history and architectural technology, focuses on the role of the architect in the process of creating the built environment. A key theme has been to examine how architects tend to be constituted as ‘authors’ in relation to ‘works’ (in the sense of artistic works), and the way in which such classifications must negotiate representative and technical horizons.

Anders Bergström is an Associate Professor in History and Theory at the KTH School of Architecture, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm. He was trained as an architect at KTH (1996) and holds a PhD in History of Architecture from the same department (2001). His research focuses on the relation between architecture and the humanities. He is currently running a project on Stockholm Public Library and its relation to the American ideal of liberal education.

Katarina Bonnevier is an architect and researcher. She holds a Ph.D. in Critical Theory of Architecture and is a lecturer and researcher at KTH School of Architecture, Stockholm. During 2010 she was a visiting professor at Haute Ecole Spécialisée de Suisse Occidentale (HES-SO) in Fribourg, Switzerland. Her research evolves around relations of architecture and power, especially from gender perspectives. She is frequently lecturing, moderating, exhibiting and participating in public programs within the fields of art, architecture, and urban planning.

Bojan Boric received a bachelor degree in architecture at the Irwin S Chanin School of Architecture, Cooper Union, New York in 1993 and in 1999 a masters degree in architecture and urban design at the GSAP Columbia University, New York. Since 1993 he has been a practicing architect working on a wide range of projects from interiors to housing, public and urban design projects internationaly. Since 1997 he runs his own practice besides teaching at universities in the New York City Metropolitan area. Today, he is responsible for the 4th and 5th year Urban Design Studio and holds the position of Masters Program Coordinator for the Urban Planning and Design program at KTH.

Elizabeth Hatz (Architect SAR/MSA) was introduced as professor at KTH in 1999 and has since then been teaching and leading Practice based research there through AKAD. She is also Associate Professor at UL School of Architecture, Limerick Ireland. She is on the board of Färgfabriken, for which she was co-founder in 1995, as President of SAR (now MSA). 2010 she curated ev+a, Irelands pre-eminent art event, and she was also involved with Ireland's exhibition at the Venice Architecture Biennale September 2010. She is part of the Strategic Board of the National Museum in Stockholm.

Penelope Haralambidou (Ph.D.) is an architect, researcher and Lecturer at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. Her work lies between architectural design, art practice and critical theory, and has been

exhibited internationally, including London, New York, Athens and the Venice Biennale of Architecture. She is author and editor of The Blossoming of Perspective: A Study (DomoBaal Editions, 2007) and has contributed writing on themes such as allegory, ‘figural theory’, the female nude and stereoscopy in architecture to a wide range of publications. Her research was short-listed for the prestigious RIBA President's Awards for Research in 2008.

Daniel Koch är arkitekt och forskare på Arkitekturskolan, KTH. Han bedriver arkitektarbete på kontoret Patchwork Architecture Laboratory, där han också är delägare, undervisar inom stadsbyggnad och arkitekturteori, och forskar om komplexa byggnader. Forskningen består i studier av bibliotek, varuhus och andra större arkitektoniska enheter, men också studier på stadsnivå. Under våren 2011 består undervisningen av urbanteori och vetenskapsmetodik, och forskningen fokuseras inom två projekt om byggnader finansierade av FORMAS och EU.

Margitta Kylberg, now retired, was the supervisor of the Archicture Library at KTH.

Helena Mattsson is an architect and a researcher based in Stockholm, Sweden. She is an Associate professor in Architecture / History and Theory of Architecture at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. Her doctoral thesis was published 2004, Arkitektur och konsumtion: Reyner Banham och utbytbarhetens estetik (Architecture and consumption: Reyner Banham and the aesthetic of expendability). She has written extensively on architecture, art and culture, and is the editor of (with S-O Wallenstein) Swedish Modernism – Architecture, Consumption and the Welfare State (2010) and 1% (2006). Mattsson was in charge for a research project at the Museum of Architecture in Stockholm, Architecture and consumption in Sweden 1930 – 1970 (2005 to 2008). Mattsson is also an editor for the culture periodical SITE.

Jonas Runberger is an architect active in practice, research and education, currently based in Stockholm. His main interests involve the relation between design techniques, architectural production and experiential effect, with an emphasis on the impact of digital technology on both experimental and conventional practice. He is currently teaching in the Architectures of Interdisciplinarity Design studio at the KTH, directing Dsearch – a digital design environment within White Arkitekter and completing his PhD in the department of Project Communication at KTH.

Frida Rosenberg is a practicing architect, educator and researcher. She received her architecture degree in 2004 from Chalmers, Gothenburg and Yale University in 2007. She is a PhD Candidate in architecture at the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm and is a guest lecturer at the architecture school at Lund University since 2006.

Kalle Samuelsson läser tredje året på KTH Arkitekturskolan.

Contributors

1

Fig. 1: Penelope Haralambidou, Déjà vu, digital projection on paper, 2009. Photograph: Andy Keate, 2009.

2

In his complex work Discours, Figure, 1971, Jean François Lyotard defends the eye against a philosophical tradition denigrating visual per-ception, by establishing the notion of the ‘fig-ure’, which he links to phenomenology, imag-es/drawings and the experience of seeing.1 He sees the figural as a violating force, which works to interrupt established structures in both the visual and the discursive realm.

In my practice-led research, the violating and transgressing force of ‘figure’ takes the guise of architectural drawing, which I use not as in-structions to build but as a critical method ana-lysing works from different disciplines, such as fine art or cinema. Projection and prediction—preceding that which it describes—traditional-ly, and still perhaps, distinguishes architectural drawing from representational drawing in art; its extrapolative but also organizational traits, however, are pertinent in practice-led research beyond architecture. Blurring the distinction between two fields of architectural endeav-our—drawing, in terms of the architect as de-signer, and theoretical research, in terms of the architect as writer—this work explores the po-tential of architectural design as critical theory, or what I have called ‘figural theory’.2

1. Jean-François Lyotard, Discours, Figure (Paris: Klincksieck, 1971).

2. Lyotard uses the term ‘figural’, which he distinguishes from ‘figurative’. For more on the notion of ‘figural/figurative theory’, see Penelope Haralambidou, “The Allegorical Project: Architecture as Figurative Theory,” in Architecture and Authorship: Studies in Disciplinary Remediation, ed. Tim Anstey, Katja Grillner and Rolf Hughes (London: Black Dog Publishing, 2007), 36–51; and Penelope Haralambidou, “Allegory, Architecture and ‘Figural Theory’,” in Intellectual Birdhouse: Artistic Practice as Research, ed. Florian Dombois, Claudia Mareis, Michael Schwab, Ute Meta Bauer (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2011) (forthcoming).

Attempting to define the methodological attributes of ‘figural theory’, here, I will discuss two research projects that employ an expanded notion of architectural drawing as a research method: The Act of Looking, 2007, and Déjà vu, 2009. The Act of Looking investigates the underlying arrangement of Étant donnés: 1° la chute d’eau, 2° le gaz d’éclairage…, Given: 1st the waterfall, 2nd the illuminating gas…, 1946–66, the last enigmatic major work by French artist Marcel Duchamp. Permanently installed at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the work has not ceased to puzzle, since it was initially open to the public in 1969. The first interface that awaits the viewer is an old weathered door in a darkened, empty room. There is no access through the door, but two peepholes at eyelevel reveal an unexpected, eerie scene beyond: in an open landscape and bathed in searing light, a recumbent, spread eagled and faceless female nude is holding a gas lamp, while in the back-ground, a waterfall silently glitters. This porno-graphic sight is not a flat image, but a three-di-mensional diorama that Duchamp assembled and meticulously constructed in secret during a period of twenty years.

A full-scale (re)drawing of Étant donnés in steel and waxed thread, The Act of Looking, gives material substance to the act of looking through Étant donnés’s two peepholes and weaves a dia-gram of the binocular visual field.3 The Act of Looking is a ghost image of Duchamp’s as-semblage, where all the main constituent ele-ments—door, wall, nude body and illusionis-tic landscape—loose their materiality, while

3. The Act of Looking was first exhibited at The Blossoming of Perspective: A Study by Penelope Haralambidou, a solo show at DomoBaal Gallery in January 2007. For more images see, www.domobaal.com

The Act of Looking and Déjà vu: Notes on a ‘Figural Theory’ //Penelope Haralambidou

3

the invisible architecture of the gaze acquires substance in the form of intersecting weighted strings. Restaging the pattern of the visual rays starting on the two peepholes on the door and crossing to touch the elements composing the interior view, The Act of Looking is a three-dimensional drawing plotting the volume of the pornographic scene. Although modeled on Duchamp’s work, The Act of Looking could be seen as a physical diagram of any binocular gaze from a static position and a material drawing of the architecture of binocular visual space.

The second work that I will discuss here, Déjà vu analyses Alain Resnais’s equally enig-matic film Last Year at Marienbad, 1961, based on a screenplay by Alain Robbe-Grillet. The film takes place in an enormous labyrinthine Baroque hotel, where X, the male protagonist, meets A and confronts her with descriptions of their romantic involvement a year ago, of which she has no recollection. A third protagonist M may or may not be A’s husband. A riddle of se-duction, the narrative of the film flips between present and past, memory and imagination and has been described as a love story, abstract thrill-er or philosophical puzzle. Although it received mixed reviews the film was winner of the Gold-en Lion award at the 1961 Venice Film Festival.

Déjà vu is an abstract paper model of the Baroque hotel, in which the film takes place, and a digital reworking of selected scenes spe-cifically designed to be projected on the model, thus ‘redrawing’ the film in light.4 The three-dimensional arrangement of the hotel ‘rooms’, carefully made out of drawing on, cutting and folding paper, breaks the flatness of the single screen and the chronological linearity of the scene sequence. Its simplicity reflects the ellip-tical storyline of Alain Robbe-Grillet’s screen-play in contrast to the ornate setting. Placed on a table, the model dressed with the luminous imagery of the film, allows the viewer to circu-

4. Déjà vu was first exhibited at Speculative Models: Air Grid and the Blossoming of Perspective, a two-person show with Victoria Watson at London Gallery West in April 2009, see www.westminster.ac.uk/schools/media/ london-gallery-west/exhibitions/speculative-models.

late around and behind it and occupy this ex-pansion of the picture plane at an intimate level.

EnigmaAs Jane Rendell discusses in her essay ‘Site-Writing: Enigma and Embellishment’ the work of art operates as an enigma, a transference of un-deciphered cultural meaning, both for the artist and the recipient but also the critic/recip-ient.5 Duchamp has also described the artist as a ‘mediumistic being’ and stressed the specta-tor’s role in completing the work of art through interpretation and evaluation. Although all re-ception of art is an act of interpretation, both Duchamp’s assemblage and Resnais’s film are notoriously enigmatic, addressing the viewer and audience as riddles: In regards to the as-semblage: Why is this woman lying naked in twigs? Why is she holding a gas lamp? Who is she? Where is she? And in regards to the film: Have A and X met before? Has A forgotten or repressed their encounter or is X lying? Who is M? What happened last year at Marienbad?

Even the title of Duchamp’s work is struc-tured as a mathematical riddle. Given the wa-terfall, and the illuminating gas as portrayed in the assemblage, the ellipsis invites the specta-tor’s completion of the equation through inter-pretation and critical evaluation.

Beyond attempting to decode the verbal questions that the two works pose, though, my work aims to unravel the visual organization of clues in their mise en scène. Drawn by the un-resolved riddles imbedded in the two works, I designed the hypotheses guiding my research as allegorical architectures: a full-scale dia-gram of the voyeur’s gaze for Étant donnés, and a scaled paper model of the Baroque hotel, for Last Year at Marienbad.6 This ‘figural’ redraw-ing of existing pieces of work in art and cinema has a twofold purpose. It aims to unravel the

5. Jane Rendell, “Site-Writing: Enigma and Embellishment,” in Critical Architecture, ed. Jane Rendell, Jonathan Hill, Murray Fraser and Mark Dorrian (London: Routledge, 2007), 150–62.

6. Penelope Haralambidou, “Given: The Tower, the Corridor and the Fall…,” in The Blossoming of Perspective: A Study, ed. Penelope Haralambidou (London: DomoBaal Editions, 2007).

4

Fig. 2: Penelope Haralambidou, The Act of Looking, steel, perspex, waxed thread and acid etching on nickel silver, 2007. Photograph: Penelope Haralambidou, 2009.

5

perceptual and psychological spaces imbedded in the structure of the artwork, and the film, while at the same time it pursues the primary focus of the research: a questioning of the un-derlying syntax of representation techniques in architecture.

The Manual and the ScreenplayApart from direct analysis of the artwork and the film, significant in my research is the study of the documents directly informing or de-scribing the construction of the originals.

Guiding my design decisions compos-ing the Act of Looking was Duchamp’s Manual of Instructions, a ring-bound folder provid-ing numbered ‘operations’ for taking Étant donnés apart and reassembling it.7 Duchamp recorded every detail thoroughly: the fold-er contains hand-written descriptions in French, accompanied by black and white photographs covered with explanatory in-scriptions, marks and numbers, supplement-ed by diagrams, plans, elevations, sketches and a scaled, folded cardboard model. Ac-cording to Anne D’Harnoncourt although there is an ‘air of enigma to this matter-of-fact guide’ Duchamp makes no attempt to explain the meaning of Étant donnés; he ‘simply leads step by step through the process of putting the assemblage together.’8,

The Manual resembles an architectural specification and was instrumental during

7. Marcel Duchamp, Manual of Instructions for: Étant donnés: 1° la chute d’eau, 2° le gaz d’éclairage (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1987).

8. Duchamp took the opportunity to make the manual when he had to transfer the assemblage between two studios. The manual was not published until 1987.

the final installation of Étant donnés at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Furthermore, it played an important role in the inception and composition of the Act of Looking, offer-ing information about important construc-tion details, materials and dimensions. The Act of Looking follows the Manual’s division into operations describing the arrangement of Étant donnés’s constituent elements—door, wall, nude and landscape. As a conse-quence, my work is a practice-led analysis of not only Étant donnés but also the Manual itself, a critical interpretation of Duchamp’s work process and methodology through drawing and making.

To construct Last Year at Marienbad, Resnais used the literary blueprint of Robbe-Grillet’s exceptionally precise screenplay.9 As one of the main advocates of the New Novel, Robbe-Grillet’s writing style is methodical and geometric, focusing on often compulsive and repetitive descriptions of objects and spaces rather than the characters that occupy them. A close reading of the screenplay led to the choice of the scenes composing Déjà vu: the repeated game of nim; the theatre scene locking the plot in mise en abyme; panning views of ornamental ceilings and receding corridors; the frozen gar-den scene with the painted elongated shadows; close-ups of the three protagonists; and the am-biguous incident in the bedroom, that might hold the key to the mystery.

Repetitions and fractured timelines and plots in the film produce an effect equivalent to a collage or a cubist painting. The screenplay’s lack

9. Alain Robe-Grillet, Last Year at Marienbad, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Grove Press, 1962).

Fig. 3: Four spreads from Marcel Duchamp, Manual of instructions for: Étant donnés: 1° la chute d’eau, 2° le gaz d’éclairage (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1987).

6

of chronological indications led the script super-visor Sylvette Baudrot to draw an elaborate graph or algorithm that organises the film sequences on an X and Y axis in relation to change of set but also time.10 She describes how three main areas ar-ranged vertically represent time, ‘at the bottom the present, at the top the past (last year), and in between an intermediary area which has helped me graphically separate the present from the past more clearly, and which represents what one might call ‘time in general’ (in his shooting script Resnais spoke of ‘eternity’ shots)’.11 Emphatic black touches lined up in the middle represented shots that had ‘no precise date, everything that was future time or timeless’.

In Déjà vu, this diagrammatic delineation of time is manifest through the arrangement of screens within the range of focus of the projec-tion pyramid. Placed at an angle the projector casts a pyramid of light that spans the whole surface of the table. Scenes relating to the pre-sent—the camera scanning embellished ceil-ings and views of lavish corridors—feature in the middle of the table where the projection is in sharp focus. Conversely, the past, ‘last year’—the mysterious bedroom scene—and ‘time in general’—the garden scene—ap-pear to some extent out of focus, at the back and front of the table respectively. Belonging to memory or imagination, these scenes are blurred compared to a sharper present.

10. The diagram was published in Cahiers du Cinéma 123 September 1961: 9.

11. Quoted in Jean-Louis Leutrat, L’Anneé dernière à Marienbad (Last year in Marienbad), trans. Paul Hammond (London: British Film Institute, 2000), 31, from François Thomas, L’Atelier d’Alain Resnais (Paris: Flammarion, 1989), 152.

Adaptation and Assimilation My research analyses existing pieces of work through adaptation, by creating new work that interprets and restages the original. Both The Act of Looking and Deja vu assimilate but also subvert the themes, methods and language of communication of the artwork and the film re-spectively.

Étant donnés is often described as an assem-blage as it is composed from disparate found el-ements—old Spanish door and twigs collected from the woods—or entirely constructed by Duchamp—tinted photographic landscape, or cast nude. In his Manual of Instructions, Du-champ refers to Étant donnés as an approxima-tion démontable, an approximation that can be taken apart, or disassembled, adding that the word approximation should convey a margin of improvisation in its assembly.12

Akin to Étant donnés, The Act of Looking consists of distinct elements; setting up in-volved precisely arranging the wall-attach-able elements and an elaborate weaving of the strings in situ. Exhibited twice—at the DomoBaal gallery in 2007 and at London Gallery West in 2009—the two versions of its installation slightly differ, making my redraw-ing of Étant donnés another approximation démontable.13 Nevertheless, in contrast the

12. Marcel Duchamp, Manual of Instructions for: Étant donnés: 1° la chute d’eau, 2° le gaz d’éclairage (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1987).

13. I first constructed The Act of Looking for the exhibition ‘The Blossoming of Perspective: A Study by Penelope Haralambidou’ at DomoBaal Gallery, London, in January 2007. For more images, see www.domobaal.com. The work was shown again at Speculative Models: Air Grid and The Blossoming of Perspective, a two person show at London Gallery West in April–May

Fig. 4: Book cover and spread from Alain Robe-Grillet, Last Year at Marienbad, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Grove Press, 1962).

7

components that assemble the Act of Looking are not found, but constructed from scratch, from materials that deliberately reference the pristine look of the Large Glass.14

Déjà vu, on the other hand, assimilates the experience of watching Last Year at Ma-rienbad on the big screen. The new restaging of the narrative is also through a projection: images of light captured on—here multi-ple—screens, and similarly to a cinema thea-tre, the digital reworking of the original film is presented in a darkened room. According to Ro Spankie in her review of the work: ‘the resulting installation strangely both decon-structs the film yet re-constructs its sense of déjà vu. Unlike the original film, Déjà vu … is set up so that the audience can move around the model, allowing the projection to be viewed reversed on the back of the paper screens. Played on a continuous loop there is no beginning and end: the audience is free to wander in and out as it will.’15 The film’s Baroque hotel setting is a sinuous montage of different locations in Munich including Schloss Nymphenburg palace and the Ama-lienburg hunting lodge, mixed with studio-constructed scenes. Exposing the fragmen-tary architectural structure of the film, the pa-per model breaks the linearity of the plot and recounts events concurrently, as if in separate ‘rooms’.

2009, see www.westminster.ac.uk/schools/media/london-gallery-west/exhibitions/speculative-models

14. The Act of Looking establishes a link between the Large Glass and Étant donnés.

15. Ro Spankie, “Speculative Models: Air Grid and the Blossoming of Perspective,” The Journal of Architecture 14/4 (2009): 533–537.

Drawing The visceral impact of the subject matter, its blatant presentation and dazzling light effects conceal Étant donnés’s intricate architecture. However, a study of Duchamp’s Manual reveals that Étant donnés although hand-made and in a seemingly disorderly manner, is a precise struc-ture. The view has been carefully arranged ac-cording to clandestine measuring and organis-ing grids: hidden from view, a black and white squared lino on the floor provides markings for the positioning of different elements, similarly to the underlying grid organizing a perspective view, and the numbered bricks on the broken wall perform like the threads on Alberti’s veil.16

The Act of Looking attempts to foreground this reading of Étant donnés as a meticulous draw-ing. It negates its everyday materiality and figura-tive render and exposes the immateriality of the voyeuristic gaze travelling through the two peep-holes in an abstract spatial diagram. In compari-son to the—often described as vulgar—physical-ity of Étant donnés, The Act of Looking is delicate and ethereal, but is also a drawing that treads the world of things: drawn not on paper but in space, in steel, Perspex and waxed thread, it is a full-scale ghost image of the structure it dissects. Not un-like the drawing machine depicted in Albrecht Dürer’s famous woodcut Man Drawing a Lute from 1525, the act of stringing the model be-came a laborious act of drawing lines in space. As in Étant donnés, in The Act of Looking, the process of drawing disengages from the flat page or screen and becomes a physical performance in space.

16. Penelope Haralambidou, “The Stereoscopic Veil,” Architectural Research Quarterly, 11/1 (March 2007): 118–129.

Fig. 5: Comparison between diagram of perspective construction and layout of Étant donnés. Drawn by the author, 2007.

8

In his book For a New Novel, Robbe-Grillet states that in the modern novel, it is not rare to encounter a description that starts from a point: ‘it seems to derive from a tiny fragment without importance—what most resembles a point—starting from which it invents lines, planes, an architecture’.17 Similarly to the Renaissance perspectivists constructing imaginary archi-tectures from a single vanishing point, Robe-Grillet conceives of his novels as drawings of a fictional architecture and plots the narrative as a ‘pure construction’. Furthermore, it is through repetitive detailed descriptions of events and spaces that X draws the architecture of the al-leged amorous encounter in A’s mind.

Déjà vu exposes the architectural structure of the screenplay by becoming a topographi-cal rather than chronological incarnation of the plot. Furthermore, I have conceived of Déjà vu as a drawing of light on paper. The play of light and shadow of the film seeps through and mark the screens like ephemeral ink. The looped repetition of Déjà vu draws and redraws the selected scenes, inscribing their luminous traces in memory.

Blossoming In Duchamp’s Transformers, Jean François Lyo-tard has read Étant donnés as an incarnation of the rules of linear perspective—a representation technique based on monocular observation, or looking with one eye—aimed to reveal its hid-den assumptions.18 Indeed, the two peepholes on Étant donnés’s door reference another represen-

17. Alain Robe-Grillet, For a New Novel, trans. Richard Howard (Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 1989).

18. Jean-François Lyotard, Duchamp’s TRANS/formers, trans. Ian McLeod (Venice, CA: Lapis, 1990).

tation technique, stereoscopy, and remember the ‘other’ eye which perspective and its lineage in contemporary representation techniques has much neglected. Stereoscopy, allows two slightly different images to merge mentally and form a single visual sensation with an extra dimension of depth, which is absent from a single eye view. This opening up, and unfolding of visual space, relates to Duchamp’s term ‘blossoming’, which he has used to describe erotic desire, in tandem with an expansion to another dimension. The Act of Look-ing attempts to study and expose Duchamp’s underlying stereoscopic architecture of desire in Étant donnés, which coincides with a desire to see beyond the accepted norms of representation.

In Last Year at Marienbad we find another blossoming. The décor of the bedroom, where key scenes of the film take place, starts as a stark interior bathed in a blinding white light, but gradually blossoms into a suffocating, com-plex, flowery pattern. This blossoming repre-sents again erotic desire, but also the opening up and unfolding of either a repressed memory, or a newly constructed event in the imagina-tion. A digital reworking of the blossoming room scene in Déjà vu exposes and questions the psychological architecture of memory and desire in Last Year at Marienbad.

The comparison of the methodologies in-volved in making Déjà vu and The Act of Looking reveals them as speculative drawings— expos-ing the underlying structure of Resnais’s film and Duchamp’s artwork—and as a physical em-bodiment of the memory residues the original works leave in the viewer’s mind. Furthermore, they both propose an expansion from the flat picture plane into three dimensions: a blossom-ing of visual space and the imagination.¤

Fig. 6: Albrecht Dürer, Man Drawing a Lute, woodcut, 1525.

9

Matter, in our view, is an aggregate of ‘images.’ And by ‘image’ we mean a certain existence which is more than that which the idealist calls a representation, but less than that which the realist call a thing—an existence placed halfway between the ‘thing’ and the ‘representation.’Henri Bergson, Matter & Memory (1896)

10

Ev+a1—the Irish “exhibition of visual arts”—is an odd phenomenon. Its been going annually for 34 years, a pre-eminent art event curated by internationally renowned talents, held at Lime-rick in the west of the country, a small city on the thrusting river Shannon with a far from flat-tering reputation (nick-named like ”stab city”)

Limerick gives you surprise after surprise—from fabulous butcher shops and food retailers to a multitude of astounding personal under-takings. But it is only vaguely appreciated and partially exhausted by developments on the out-skirts, heavily car depending. With some serious segregation problems the beautiful Georgian centre is gradually turning into a ghost town. But the place has guts and is at the same time lo-cation for Irish Chamber Music Orchestra, a re-spected university (UL) and art & design school (LSAD). It also enjoys a real, vital art life: fringe, obstinate, unpredictable and alive. Art thrives in complex and contradictory places.

Limerick in many ways epitomises the cha-racteristics that once made me think of Ireland as my my country of emotional adoption. It has roughness and irresistible charm; it has contra-dictions, irrationalities and social intelligence; it is beautiful and ugly; it relies on negotiation and interaction, not complacency or consen-sus. I guess it is like a counter-weight to the Swedish lean-ness. Places that contradict your preconceived ideas are somehow attractive in a deeper sense: they make you live, because they force you to make an effort to rediscover things. These places can change your perception becau-se they challenge you. You don’t flirt with them; because they only accept full commitment.

1. EV+A 2010: Matters showed 13th March – 23rd May, 2010, in Limerick, Ireland. The quote from Matter & Memory is taken from Henri Bergson: Key Writings , edited by Keith Ansell-Pearson and John Mullarkey. London: Continuum, 2002.

Ireland is undergoing a severe financial cri-sis at the moment. In such a situation art has a major role to play—but you have to fight for the resourses to sustain it. Ev+a has decisive importance in the art life of Ireland, precisely because it is on the fringe and not in Dublin. It has attracted curators from all over the world, including Lars Nittve in 1993, who moved la-ter from Tate Modern in London to Moderna Museet in Stockholm and now Hongkong. This being the case it felt like a real privilege to be invited to curate the event when last year ev+a opted for an architect (albeit art lover) rather than an established curator. This stirred a few things up, and the press doesn’t dislike that, so the reviews were optimal. The advan-tage for an outsider like myself was the freedom to cross borders of age, type and artistic clus-ters. I could fuse established artists with young talents and focus quality and relevance as sole criteria. 59 artists from 14 countries were ex-hibited in 11 different venues throughout the city. There is an extensive catalogue available.

ev+a 2010 was given the theme name “Matters,” a deliberately ambiguous with re-sonances in the material (stuff whichmakes up the world) and the conceptual (subjects outli-ned in the mind, issues of urgency. The para-dox is symmetrical to the complexity of mate-rial life itself. As Bergson suggests, matter and spirit are paired, not dissociated, in our minds, through image, intuition and memory.

The material presence of Hans Joseph-sohn—senior of the show with his 90 years— hrough his standing and reclining figures, is timeless and without compromises, explana-tions or excuses. You can’t avoid it. It is without use and it is absolutely necessary. Paired with architect Peter Märkli’s 60 drawings the mutu-al exchange of the disciplines came forth. The dialogue across the same concrete floor of level

Eva Hild, Consecutive Working (2010). On Matters

//Elizabeth Hatz

11

4 in the Hub, with young Myles Shelley’s tiny photographs, capturing people sitting side by side with their laptops and mobile phones—as a gentle worry about non-communication—was ironically contradicting itself, communi-cating an intense intimacy. In the same space another well established painter, Michael Kane had surprised the curator with the gift of “Life Story” 100 small paintings on pages from Irish Times supplement and two huge ones—all of them made especially for ev+a, all of them th-rusting of life: the frightful scope of passions—the engine that drives it all—despite reason, or for good reasons—into the hard core of life it-self. It is all but safe. It is beyond good and evil. A child abuser next to an undressed politician, next to a steaming love scene, next to a magni-ficently mute animals head, next to a concen-tration camp, next to a silent street, next to a distinct male figure, next to a sleeping car…

In a way any exhibition ought to be seen as the possible beginning of something next, the coming adventure. The youngest artist to take part in E+VA this year, Christopher Mahon (see illustration), got so taken by the work of the Swedish artist Staffan Nihlén that he tra-velled to Stockholm to meet him. And likewise the show generated a passion IN Nihlén for the Limerick limestone—to the point that he now talks about making a show exclusively in this unique, black, resistant material. With his 65 years with art (he started at the age of 15) he has long experience of working directly in the quarry and probably his conversations with Giacometti and Marino Marini in the 1940s have made the observation so much more keen, fragile and selective.

One of the strongest alchemists of “mat-ters” was Janna Syvännoya, whose transfor-mation of material is as curiously inventive as a child’s naked eye, yet as sophisticated as a Tempura Udon. Her birch bark “paintings”, or walls sewn out of accountant sheets, rescued from a Japanese paper mill or her huge stretch of white tulle, basted with horses hair into an ode for an “Old Friend” (her horse) have an in-tense material presence.

The show also went out in the city. Shin Egashira’s “Beauty of our Pain”, huge construc-tions, like crosses between medieval torture instruments and modern work-out machines, were tested in gyms, on the river and in the magnificent St Mary’s Cathedral. And during the 11 weeks of the show, central Catherine Street was the location for art events directly involving the merchants and inhabitants along the street, through Spirit Store and its surpri-sing undertakings.

One of the art works made especially for e+va will also remain in Limerick—the huge corten rain water collector by Tom de Paor and Peter Maybury. The casual conversation piece of rain and weather is on the one hand lose, ee-rie and vague; on the other it conceals unseen forces. In our relatively young concept of com-fort it constitutes a somewhat irritating uncer-tainty. With the new strains on our planet it may prove to be more influential on our future lives than we presently are prepared to realize.

The piece is a pyramid on its point and gradually turning more and more golden with rust, it is like the incarnation of the concept of transience, materiality and change. The in-scriptions relate to the passionate story of the semi-divine nymph Arethusa, transformed into a cloud, turning into rain and finally fusing with the lovesick river god Alpheus in the sea.

Last, John Gerrard’s Grow Finish Unit, vir-tually representing a super-real concentration camp for pigs in Kansas, needs be mentioned as it was so stunningly beautiful, matching archi-tect Peter Carroll’s elegant piglet slat benches, from where you would sit and watch Limerick, with its a food producing history. Together the two art works formed a silent suspense that stretches out towards the city and turns it into vibrant foreground, instead of picturesque backdrop.

The ev+a show phenomenon is in many ways typical for our contemporary condition; a small, forgotten local corner, lights up for a moment with art to talk with the world about things that might matter to us.¤

C.R. Mahon, Untitled (2010).

Instant Authenticity:

TAKE - AWAYOLD REALITY DISGUISED AS THE NEW REALITY

Team up in your respective groups.*Arrange your towers into one new project, one complete landscape. Use your imagination and all of this semester’s work to re-interpret your projects – pimp it up, tar ‘n’ feather, make fantastic claims about its past.Redress it turn it into something else or exaggerate what you already perceive it REALLY is.

Make a soundtrackMake a narrationSet the lightningRedress the towersDefine the space around and in-between them.Act as guideAct as user and consumer of the environment created.Make your projects do what you tell them to.Make us BELIEVE.

Task consists of a three-minute performance consisting of mix of sound, acting, narration and other make-over strategies of your old projects. Use digital Cameras and mobile phones to record sound, use the internet to find other suitable audio. Hand-in is a tourist brochure.

INSTANT AUTHENTICITY

* “American Idols”, “Big, Bigger, the Best”, “Y a carrie”, “Pile ou face”, “Reflex”, “John et Jane Doe”, “Jonathan and the 3 Latin beauties” and “Une histoire de musique”

Workshop with Architect Pelle Backman Domesticity Studio – TALL TALES, QUEER HABITS

Joint Master of Architecture, Fribourg, 26/03/2010

Reality old and new.

14

Spring 2010 Katarina Bonnevier held Domesticity Studio at Joint Master of Architecture in Fribourg (www.jointmaster.ch). Presented here is the description of the studio.

Philosopher Audre Lourde stated: "For the master’s tools will never dis-mantle the master’s house." Feminist activist Lillian Robinson nodded her head and said: "Sure, but people have to live in a house, not in a metaphor. Of course you use the Master’s tools if those are the only ones you can lay your hands on. Perhaps what you can do with them is to take apart that old mansion, using some of its pieces to put up a far better one where there is room for all of us?"1

The studio is taking on the challenge of differ-entiation, to design altering architectures where there is “room for all of us”. This involves actors, their desires, their sensibilities and their actions in, or around the corners of architecture. The studio brings into play the architectural possi-bilities to slide over or reposition oppressive or-ders. Each one of the participating students will get the support and opportunity to explore and develop personal interests, motives and desires in architecture. We will navigate a broad field relating to non-normative modes of thinking away from correctness and narrow answers. To realize dreams of transformation.

1. Lourde, Audre. “The Master’s Tools will Never Dismantle the Master’s House.” In Gender Space Architecture: An Interdisciplinary Introduction, edited by Jane Rendell, et al., 53-55. London & New York: Routledge, 2000.

Theoretical BackdropArchitecture is a concrete material practice always entangled with social and historical relations of power and desire. In any building activity, ideologies and norms are reiterated, and subject positions are partly construct-ed through building activities. Or, to put it simple; first we build our houses, thereafter they build us. Just like theatrical masks and costumes create characters. The studio will link masks, dressing and architecture, not to claim that they are the same thing, but to start thinking make-up, accessories, habiliments, salons and towers as variations in scale rather than distinctly different groups. Cosmetics, clothing, walls and buildings create and sus-tain norms and normal behavior in a certain situation, but they can also act as disguises that alter reality.

Queer theory shifts the rigid confines that program gender and generations, racify and classify according to the rule; ”everything in its right place”. Queer perspectives, especially the theories of performativity and normativity, are critical friends in these investigations. We are going to examine how norms are embodied and create social spaces and how normativity is reproduced. The performative power of built environments is strong and contagious; to build your imagination is an act of social and economic force, which holds the promise to bring about change.

The Matter of Matter, or Thinking By Doing

The studio is taking on the challenge of differ-entiation by suggesting, testing, critical acting in relation to norms; Queerying space, touch-ing feeling, celebrating diversity, designing, building and becoming architecture. The stu-dio follows a generative design process in three

Tall Tales, Queer Habits //Katarina Bonnevier

15

main parts, the one leading to the other, includ-ing shorter workshops and literature seminars.

It starts with S1.Short Stories, souvenir col-lection and exploration of the carnival (includ-ing a field trip to the carnival of Basel), mas-querading and appropriation of public space. The studio expands around fictive characters and enters into the domain of exaggerations and theatricality. In your face—a kind of maxi-mum—architecture whose main interest is to provoke sensibilities. Towers and masks are used as our tools of transformation. We will ex-amine the behavior of masks, which hides and discloses in the same swift moment, and the typology and meanings invested in the tower, landmark, lighthouse, brag piece, national symbol etcetera.

The second part, S2.Haunted House, evolves around program, with the aim to create collective homes, hang-outs or living-rooms; habitats that are devoted to both intimate and public life. The term living-room is employed as a formula to investigate semi-public spaces which construes domesticity while not being constrained to the idealized and private nuclear family. ”Formule living-room” was articulated by architect Eileen Gray as a point of departure for her design . In English the term underlines the performative aspects of architecture, as an act that creates meaning, and does not separate the social space with actors and deeds from the built. There are aspects of intimacy and every-day life in the concept, which does not exclude visionary or public dimensions. The program-ming movement oscillates between outside and inside, public and intimate.

In the third part, S3.Architectural Ampli-fier, each of the participants will pursue the previous explorations into individual architec-tural design proposals.¤

Alix Anderegg, Quoi, Qui, Comment, Pourquoi (2010 ).

16

Act Up!

17

18

The Architecture of Knowledge: The Library of the Future är den första publikationen i en ny serie om arkitektur utgiven av Nederlands Ar-chitectuurinstituut (NAi), kallad NAI Files. Avsikten med serien är att agera proaktivt gäl-lande arkitektur och arkitektrollen, och att därigenom lyfta fram arkitektur som djupare och viktigare i byggprocessen än enbart som estetiskt komplement eller imagekonsulta-tion. Genom att göra detta hoppas man på sikt åstadkomma en genomgripande förändring och tillåta arkitektur att hantera den bredare uppsättning frågor som man anser höra till dis-ciplinen. En ambition som på många sätt är in-tressant men som ställer vissa krav på det som produceras—om syftet är att bygga en djupare förståelse för arkitekturämnet som centralt i alla byggnadsfrågor måste dessa diskuteras på ett sätt som är intressant både inom arkitektur-disciplinen och utanför den.

Kanske just därför är biblioteksdiskus-sionen extra intressant: bibliotek är en av de få byggnadstyper som ännu gör anspråk på att vara offentliga inte bara i fysisk tillgänglighet utan som representation av demokratin både symboliskt och konkret i form av gemensam, öppen mötesplats. Jämfört andra konkurre-rande program byggs de också i ganska stor ut-sträckning. Ofta är det frågan om prestigepro-jekt med en genomgripande program- och or-ganisationsdiskussion, oavsett om detta syns på resultatet eller inte. Det är också en diskussion där, vilket framgår tydligt efter att ha besökt ett antal nationella, nordiska och internationella konferenser om bibliotekets framtid, en djup-gående arkitekturdiskussion skulle kunna bidra med en hel del. Diskussionen står relativt stilla och stampar omkring i frågan om bokens död och hur digitala medier gör biblioteksbyggna-der onödiga, med följdslutsats att ’biblioteket är [ska bli] en mötesplats’. Ungefär som ett torg eller café, fast med information. Som ändå går

att googla varhelst man än är. Det resulterar inte sällan i tämligen likartade bokhallar som, frånset ibland stora arkitektoniska kvaliteter, inte bidrar till en utveckling av konceptet "bib-liotek". Kort sagt saknas precision i de frågor till vilka arkitekturdisciplinen verkligen skulle kunna bidra.

Det är alltså en högst aktuell bok. Eller, bok? The Architecture of Knowledge: The Library of the Future är något svårklassificerad som me-dium. Emedan den i mycket utger sig för att vara en bok, så är den till både innehåll, layout och disposition närmare en arkitekturtidskrift med en samling artiklar av olika slag. Typen av texter, deras stil, omfång och djup ligger ock-så närmare tidskriftens. I huvudsak finns här korta texter, diskuterande artiklar, intervjuer, workshop-dokumentation och projektpresen-tationer varvat om varandra för att redan ge-nom sin komposition skapa en metadiskussion om bibliotek som är djupare och bredare än var artikel för sig. Blandningen är dock inte alltid självklar och till viss del är det upp till läsaren att hitta en röd tråd.

Vad gäller innehållet beror det på hur man förhåller sig till den höga ambitionen. Förenk-lingar som att knyta ihop kunskap som något immateriellt och biblioteket som kommunika-tionsplats för kunskap är inget nytt, och att där-med föreslå att en telefon kan betraktas som bib-liotek är heller inget nytt utan sådant som trös-kas på bibliotekskonferens efter bibliotekskon-ferens i ett försök att tänka kreativt, återigen re-sulterande i att bibliotek skall vara mötesplatser. Vi lär oss ingenting, och repeterar bara ett an-greppssätt som funnits inom biblioteksvärlden åtminstone sedan 1990-talet. Att den digitala utvecklingen skulle döda bibliotek är knappast ett provokativt påstående längre—eller borde inte vara det. Då är en intressantare fråga varför bokens död leder till fler Pocketshop butiker el-ler 2000-talets tidksriftsboom. Vi skulle här som

The Architecture of Knowledge, The Library of the Future //Daniel Koch

Omslaget till The Architecture of Knowledge: The Library of the Future (Rotterdam, NAi Publishers: 2010).

19

arkitekter istället kunna bidra med precision i både kritisk-estetisk, rumsligt-organisatorisk, situationsstrukturell och rumsnarrativ mening, på ett sätt som för diskussionen framåt. Om vi å andra sidan tror att bibliotek faktiskt är döda borde vi inte publicera böcker om deras framtid.

Jag menar absolut inte att vi inte skall dis-kutera program eller ifrågasätta om bibliotek skall finnas. Vi borde dock vara mer precisa, ha ett mer utvecklat resonemang och driva frågan tydligare vad bibliotek som rum, representa-tion, och funktion är, kan vara, och kan bli. Då kan polariseringen kring boken som ting, eller förenklingen av biblioteksbyggnaden till mö-tesplats, brytas upp och debatten kan ta ett steg framåt. Att böcker, kunskap, och kunskapsin-hämtning är någonting annat idag än före den digitala revolutionen ter sig uppenbart—det kan mycket väl vara därför det har byggts så mycket bibliotek under perioden. Frågan är vad detta innebär för en verksamhet som inte bara förmedlar information eller kunskap, el-ler är någon slags informationssnabbköp, utan som har till uppgift att representera samma kunskap som demokratisk och offentlig idé och form, bortom mediet i sig, alltså oavsett om detta är digitalt eller tryckt.

Att föra den här diskussionen i en recen-sion är inte självklart. Orsaken till att göra det är det uttalade syftet i ledaren: att agera för ar-kitektur som en kunskap och disciplin central för hela byggprocessen. Då behöver innehållet också leda till mer än idisslade argument från just de aktörer som vi ämnar övertyga att vi kan bidra med något nytt till. Frågan blir snarare om publikationen gör det än om texterna i sig är intressanta i allmänhet. Motsvaras då dessa högt ställda anspråken?

Till att börja med så slipper vi, för en gång skull, en längre historisk exposé, vilket gör att boken undgår att framstå som ett mausoleum över gårdagens bibliotek. Denna har också han-terats i någorlunda nyligen publicerade böcker som Fred Lerners Story Of Libraries: From the Invention of Writing to the Computer Age, Marco Berettas Library As Place: History, Community and Culture och Mathew Battles Library: An

Unquiet History med varierande grad av ny-tänkande kring bibliotekens historia. Värd att nämna i sammanhanget är också Alberto Man-guels personliga och poetiska verk Nattens Bib-liotek som konceptuellt och historiskt kretsar kring bibliotek och böcker i vidaste mening. Gemensamt för dessa böcker är att diskussio-nen där får utrymme att på det omfattande, och ibland långrandiga, sätt som krävs för förståel-sen av de historiska processer som tagit oss dit vi är idag.

Vad vi får är istället texter som går rakt in i bibliotekens här, nu och nära framtid, liksom presentationer av undersökande workshops och projekt som skett inom NAi:s regi. Vi får också ett mindre antal aktuella referensprojekt kort redovisade, liksom diskussionen om bo-kens död, digitala medier, och bibliotek som mötesplats. Om vi till att börja med bortser från om boken möter ambitionsnivån finns här välformulerade texter som koncist behandlar dessa frågor och är en bra läsning för den som vill få en snabb överblick av biblioteksdiskus-sionen som den ser ut idag och igår—vilket är värt en hel del i sig. Det tidskriftslika formatet lämpar sig för ett fritt läsande där just de frågor eller projekt man själv finner intressanta snabbt kan hittas, medan annat lätt kan hoppas över. Till viss del en fördel för den läsare som inte vill läsa hela boken, men större klarhet i texternas inbördes relationer hade kunnat stärka de-larna. Någon text hade kunnat få vara lite läng-re och mer akademisk i kontrast mot de andra vilket troligtvis hade lyft samtliga delar genom att deras kvaliteter fått stå fram tydligare.

I relation till ambitionen finns det några texter som står ut och som hade kunnat utveck-las vidare till riktigt intressanta och relevanta diskussioner. Jag tänker till exempel på det till-fälle då frågan ställs vad som händer om vi talar om bibliotekarier som “curators of knowledge and learning”? Det blir en helt annan fråga än de på bibliotekskonferenser dominanta: bib-liotikarien som neutral kunskapsförmedlare (och sökstöd nästan likt en sökmotor), och bibliotikarien som försäljare. Tyvärr likställs det i texten med en konformerande amazon-

20

liknande process där det mest lånade skulle placeras lättillgängligt, kanske grupperat efter lånemönster, något som är möjligt med den nya tekniken då vi kan söka efter böcker med hjälp av GPS. Alltså själva motsatsen till kura-torns roll som istället kan lyfta idén om ett ar-bete med att skapa nya beskrivningar, katego-riseringar, och narrativ. Men frågan är i alla fall ställd.

En annan viktig diskussion rör läsandet som aktivitet med dess sociala och rumsliga förutsättningar. Poängen här, som görs tydlig och kortfattad, är att förstå hur läsande inte handlar bara om själva läsandet, utan också om pauser, utblickar, tankar, diskussioner och reflektioner under och efter läsandet i sig—vil-ket har implikationer för hur, var, och när det sker. Läsandet reduceras till ett mindre antal olika aktiviteter som har olika förutsättningar, vilket skulle kunna översättas till program med rumsliga implikationer, och därmed bidra till

en mer nyanserad diskussion kring biblioteks-arkitektur.

Därtill kommer intressanta texter om bib-lioteket som kollektivt bokägande (projektet Choose What You Read) och om Netbooks (om läsningen av en bok utan att komma åt själva boken). Exemplet för det senare är Ma-nuel Castells The Network Society, som rekon-strueras från andra källor som citat och utdrag i första hand, och referat, kommentarer och beskrivningar i andra hand. Hur stark är denna myt om boken jämfört boken själv? Det är en fråga som på många vis går rakt in i akademin och det sätt på vilket man hanterar källor. Har vi läst—och behöver vi ha läst—originalkäl-lan? Och vad innebär det om vi istället förhål-ler oss till myten om boken, som ibland kan ha haft större inflytande än boken i fråga? En fråga som inte lika direkt är knuten till biblioteksar-kitektur, men ändå är av vikt för den kontext i vilken denna skall agera.¤

Uppslag i The Architecture of Knowledge: The Library of the Future.

21

Page from the first issue of Spektrum (1932), part of the collection of the Library of Architecture, KTHB. "Aestehtics and Society," Poul Henningsen.

22

Through the history of modern architecture, avant-garde periodicals have played an impor-tant part in implementing new theoretical per-spectives. Swedish architecture is no exception, although Spektrum, the first generally acknowl-edged avant-garde periodical in Sweden, started with literature as its main object. Spektrum was founded in 1931 by the Russian immigrant Josef Riwkin. The first editors were the writer Karin Boye together with the literary critic Erik Mes-terton, later joined by the poet Gunnar Ekelöf.

Economic difficulties, following the Kreuger affair in spring 1932, forced the pub-lisher to reorient towards architecture, thus attracting advertisers from the building indus-try. The first issue on architecture was called Arkitektur och Samhälle (Architecture and So-ciety) and was in fact identical with the last is-sue of Spektrum. During the next three years, Arkitektur och Samhälle took a radical position in promoting modern architecture. Later on, it gradually changed its position, eventually ad-vocating reactionary ideas, paradoxically con-trary to those promoted in the first issues.

The Library of Architecture at the Royal Institute of Technology contains a single copy of the first issue of Arkitektur och Samhälle. Un-fortunately, as this issue was originally spiral bound, cover and title page are missing. The cover was extremely fragile, made from Salu-bra wallpaper, of the collection designed by Le Corbusier. Furthermore, a photographic composition by El Lissitzky was printed on the cover, which is documented in the Royal Library and the Museum of Architecture in Stockholm.

Editor of this first issue was the architect Sven Markelius, most probably cooperating with his fiancé Viola Wahlstedt, a professional journalist, who had previously been a co-editor of Spektrum. Markelius invited a prestigious group of writers: architects, art historians and critics from his own personal network. Al-though Alvar Aalto and Gregor Paulsson were among the contributors, the only text later ac-knowledged was written by Gotthard Johans-son, at that time an influential critic, strongly promoting modern architecture or functional-ism—the notion that he preferred to use.

In his article “Är funktionalismen en stil?” (Is Functionalism a Style?), Gotthard Johans-son took the chance of criticising a contem-porary approach to architecture advocated by the art historian Heinrich Wölfflin and later further developed by Wölfflin’s disci-ples Sigfried Giedion and Nikolaus Pevsner. Wölfflin's approach was based on perception and a new concept of space, which privileged formal qualities and neglected cultural and historical aspects. In Sweden, this approach had recently been acknowledged in Gunnar Asplund's inaugural lecture as professor of Architecture at the Royal Institute of Technol-ogy in 1931.

Thus, Gotthard Johansson's aim was to contribute to an ideological debate, and he strongly opposed the idea that architecture was the product of formal qualities. From his point of view, no formal approaches were suffi-cient, no matter if they were based on psychol-ogy or on philosophy. Instead, he advocated a cultural approach to architecture, based partly

Treasures from the Archive: Spektrum //Anders Bergström

23

Spread from the first issue of Spektrum (1932), part of the collection of the Library of Architecture, KTHB. "Is Functionalism a Style?" ponder Gotthard Johansson.

on the use of material and technique, partly on the practical use of the actual building. Eventu-ally, he exclaimed that functionalism demand-ed a new science of architectural history, focus-ing on architecture as a cultural phenomenon.

Later on, these ideas played an important part in the foundation of architectural research on housing and planning in Sweden. In 1939, Gotthard Johansson took charge of the first of-ficial housing research programme, initiated by the Swedish Society of Arts and Crafts together with the National Association of Swedish Ar-chitects. That marked the beginning of an era of architectural research, strongly influencing ar-chitectural practise and education. However, by that time, Spektrum had long lost its significance for an avant-garde that was already well estab-lished in society.¤

ReferencesJohansson, Gotthard. “Är funktionalismen

en stil?”. In Arkitektur och Samhälle, nr 1/Spektrum, nr 7–8. Stockholm: Spektrum, 1932.

Rudberg, Eva. Sven Markelius, arkitekt. Stockholm: Byggförlaget, 1989.

Sandström, Ulf. Arkitektur och social ingenjörskonst. Linköping: Linköping Studies in Arts and Science, 1989.

Dahlberg, Johan. “Arkitektur och Samhälle”. In Bokvännen, nr 4; [434]. Stockholm: Sällskapet Bokvännerna, 1996.

24

25

New Towns: Puijang Italian Town (Top) and Londian Scandinavian Town (Bottom).

26

The Dongtan Project – the Myth of Sustainability

Chongming Island is the third largest island in China, it is also an ecologically sensitive area in close proximity to the centre of Shanghai (about 45 minutes by car) and even closer to Pudong Airport. Today it has a population of about half a million and is the site of the proposal for the famous eco-city of Dongtan—the project de-signed by Arup Corporation and SOM. The project site is owned by the Shanghai Industrial Investment Corporation. The Dongtan project was planned to occupy an area close to half of the size of Manhattan with an urban density of 50 residents per acre. Interestingly, the den-sity of Stockholm was chosen as the appropriate model, since, according to Arup’s calculations, Stockholm’s density produces the most efficient coefficient of energy use per capita.

According to the planners, Dongtan project was meant to serve as a test prototype and an example for future zero-carbon cit-ies. Similar model towns could then be devel-oped throughout China as well as in Britain. As of today, the entire project remains elusive and has fallen behind schedule. The Dongtan project was meant to become an international showcase of sustainability, but I am afraid that it turned out to be a part of an extensive mar-keting campaign developed to serve the inter-ests of governments and powerful global cor-porations that use the word “sustainability” to fulfil their economic interests.

Projects such as Dongtan are examples of top-down planning and show a lack of open-ness to the public and a lack of involvement with the local population. This lack of discus-sion with the inhabitants and not viewing the project in relation to daily life reduces the pos-sibility for future evolution of the urban envi-ronment. This large-scale planning approach, where everything is almost too well calculated

in engineering terms, has very little relation to real life and puts a huge question mark on the true meaning of words when such projects are branded as—“sustainable cities”.

The future planners, architects and poli-ticians involved in the planning of “sustain-able cities” also need to be aware of the often environmentally and socially detrimental ef-fects of the neo-liberal economic model that drives urban transformations in China and elsewhere. They also need to acknowledge the cultural and social processes in society. With-out this, the total equation needed for more sustainable planning will remain incomplete. Such global examples are an important les-son for us to learn here in Sweden, where the economic system has been going through transformations and adopting certain values of the neo-liberal market economy. Here we also have a famous Hammarby Sjöstad to be “proud of ” in one of the most segregated cities in Europe. Sweden is continuously exporting knowledge and technology around the world. With this status of influence comes great re-sponsibility and the need for self-reflection about how sustainable we are and how we can make improvements in our society as well as in urban planning. I believe that the sustainable

Rethinking Urban Development in China //Bojan Boric

Chongming Island, Wetlands National Park.

27

development of cities, countries and regions needs to be specific to the economic/political system, the local culture and the degree of de-mocracy rooted in daily life.

According to the latest news, the city of Dongtan, the project based mainly on engi-neering know-how, has been put on hold partly due to the corruption scandal that involved its main political promoter, former Shanghai mayor Chen Liangyu (now serving 18 years in prison), as well as a disagreement on who was going to pay for the construction of the city. This topic, strangely enough, came as a surprise at the end of the planning process, and each party involved was puzzled by the fact that they were supposed to cover the costs. Ironically, the project’s first phase of development, which was meant to be the main showcase of the World Expo 2010, has not even started and will prob-ably never be built as planned.

KTH and Tongji University Collaboration in Shanghai

In the autumn of 2008 I attended the 5th World Urban Forum, in Nanjing. I visited Tongji University School of Architecture and Urban Planning, in Shanghai, where I met Pro-fessor Shangwu Zhang, who was interested in collaborative project with our school of archi-tecture. After a few meetings and discussions on questions about the sustainable develop-ment of cities in China, Professor Zhang rec-ommended the project site that he believed was to become the next major development site for the Shanghai metropolitan area—Chong-ming Island. At first I was a bit hesitant when I saw the scale of the island—the third largest in China and about eight times larger then Man-hattan. I also imagined potential difficulties for conducting research that comes with such a

complex context at a distant site. At that point, it was clear to me that our students would need to grasp and understand an immense amount of information in a very short time in order to understand the context. On the other hand, I was intrigued by the prospect of this new chal-lenge. When the project commenced in April 2009, the students were engaged in a series of lectures, workshops and critique sessions con-ducted together with the Chinese students and professors in Shanghai. We established mixed project teams of KTH and Tongji University students to strengthen exchange and encour-age collaboration between students from dif-ferent cultures. The help from Tongji Univer-sity Urban Planning Department and the im-mense hospitality we encountered there ena-bled us to work and conduct a thorough on-site research. The only problem was the occasional difficulty with communication. Each student team agreed on specific topics to be addressed in order to focus their design interventions during the workshop. On returning to Stock-holm, the projects were further developed and refined.

The student research and work has been conducted during a period of two years—2008/09 and 2009/10. This time period has not only seen major infrastruc-tural projects constructed on Chong-ming Island, but it has also been dur-ing the same period of time that led to the opening of the Wold Expo in Shanghai. This timeline, which has coincided with im-portant events for China and the world, has enabled us to be eyewitnesses to the transfor-mations that Shanghai and Chongming Island have gone through in the course of two years (changes there happen rapidly). We were also able to think and rethink certain conclusions

Mega City Region – Yangtze delta changes during the 90's.

28

established since my first visit to Shanghai in the autumn of 2008.

While the visions of the Dongtan project fade away from the world scene, the island of Chongming is continuously affected by ma-jor infrastructure and developer-run projects, as well as challenges to the ecological balance on the island. During our second visit, we con-cluded that the current process of the urbani-sation of Chongming was spontaneous and will in future rely heavily on the principles of the real estate market development, the logics of economic development and much less on the fixed plan, as was planned by the Dong-tan project. The most predictable aspect of this process is the construction of infrastruc-ture projects controlled by government, which in turn also stimulate the development. The transformations that the island is experi-encing could severely alter its fragile ecologies and consequently affect neighbouring Shang-hai, a city that has most to benefit from the nat-ural and ecological balance of the island and its natural resources. It is also important to note that about 130 million people live within a 2.5-hour drive from downtown Shanghai, and this urban population is constantly growing. The resources that Shanghai greatly depends on, such as clean drinking water, are a major prob-lem, and Chongming Island has abundance of water stored in natural aquifers unaffected by the extremely polluted waters of Yangtze Riv-er. Much of Chongming Island is occupied by small farms that produce organically grown foods. In the past, agriculture has been essen-tial for the island’s inhabitants as a source of income. This aspect of island life is especially important because it serves as a source of high-quality produce in close proximity to a major urban centre—Shanghai. Unfortunately, lo-

cal farmers are not encouraged to stay on their land and are gradually abandoning their farms in search for higher incomes in urban areas. The soil of Shanghai, and especially that of this low-lying alluvial island, is very unstable (Shanghai is often referred to as the city built on tofu). The recent breaches of The Three Gorges Dam, upstream, will pose new challenges both for the island and Shanghai. Furthermore, any rise in water levels due to global warming may cause flooding and soil erosion in the urban ar-eas built along the coastline of Chongming Is-land. The ecologically sensitive wetlands on the eastern end of the island are home to rare bird species and other animals, and it is important that these areas are adequately protected from human impact.

Facing the Realities In the official planning documents for Chongming Island and Dongtan, a few of which we were able to see, it appeared that some of the very important economic, social and cultural aspects of planning had been left out or taken into consideration on a very superficial level. One of the most important facts about China today is that its new econo-my is based on the extreme form of an import-ed neo-liberal capitalist model strengthened by the lack of democracy. This fact largely contributes to the instability and uncertainty in planning for any project that does not es-tablish parameters for profit making. Further-more, the lack of more open communication that would engage the local population and also involve some of the smaller partcipants in the planning process allows for the domi-nation of the one-sided interests of large for-eign and Chinese companies. This global eco-nomic model is one of the main challenges for

Rurban Community, Emili Carrero.

29

achieving truly high levels of sustainability. Right now there is very little room for engage-ment of the public and the establishment of more inclusive processes in urban develop-ment. The grandiose scale of projects certainly fit this model of exclusion and help to reduce the range of possible outcomes in urban de-velopment. Such constraints in perspective, method of work and focus close the window on a wide range of issues that remain neglect-ed and lead to missed opportunities for the improvement of quality of life. The current planning system for eco-cities reduces the likelihood for development of more diverse forms of sustainable urban settlements and, by default, serves to benefit the very few. As a result, we see that an island that was supposed to become a model for “zero-carbon emis-sions” urban development is now connected with a gigantic long-span bridge and highway system which binds together the wealthiest regions of China to the south and the north of the island. The newly built system of high-ways, bridges and tunnels allow for an easy access to downtown Shanghai by car as well as a 25-minute ride to the airport. The door is open for expansion, as the island has become extremely attractive for all sorts of develop-ments, including luxury housing, industry and tourism. Being aware of the past per-formance of the current economic model in terms of urban development and the Chinese government’s “openness” to new investments, there is very little that stands in the way of un-

restrained urban growth on this island. This would not all be bad if there were planning instruments and methods in the form of en-forceable urban regulation in place that con-trolled development and helped to establish a greater balance between various urban forces. We also learned that the agricultural popula-tion of the island would continue the “natural progression” of abandoning their fields and moving into urban areas, thus making their properties available for development. These are only a few realities that further frame the more complete picture of challenges for achieving the urban sustainability of Chong-ming Island and the Shanghai region.

The Nine New TownsIt is also important to mention the case of nine recently developed “Western-style” towns around Shanghai, a few of which we visited. Even though these towns were not necessarily branded as eco-towns, they may serve to illustrate the nature of planning for new towns in China. The construction of new towns was a part of the project titled “One City, Nine Towns” and consisted of develop-ments that were designed by architects from Europe (including Sweden) and were sup-posed to showcase imported Western models of architecture and urbanism. The projects in general did not make a serious consideration of the context, local culture and the broader needs of the population. The project plans did not allow for the possibility for continu-

Top: Chngqiaozehn–Urban Extension. Student: Victor Alavedra. Bottom: Chongming Island–Model

Strategy for Masterplan. Students: Maria Nogovisyna and Emili Carrero.

30

ity and change, and therefore the evolution of urban areas. The result is environments that exemplify the social segregation, the city-scape, without continuity and public spaces devoid of almost any activity. The architectur-ally most significant of all nine towns, Pujiang Town, was built with the total floor space of about 1.12 million square meters. Seen from a distance, through the window of our rented minibus, the town appeared spectacular in both scale and form. The entire urban devel-opment, including all the buildings, has been designed in minute detail, according to the Italian architects’ plans. When we arrived and attempted to walk around the town, through the monumental avenues and streets between brand-new housing areas of various types, we were stopped by guards. It was then that we realised that the town is not run by the civil authority but by the real estate office—the first obligatory stop for any visitor from out-side. We were offered a guided tour of this mega-sized gated community that seemed to be almost completely empty and without inhabitants. Everything appeared perfect, except that there were no people. On the ho-rizon we could see that the development was only halfway complete and that there was a major part of town that was still emerg-ing from the dust of the construction site. The most telling moment was when the di-rector of the real estate office (in my mind, a town mayor) explained that they are having problems selling the units as people are not

interested in buying these properties. He told us that the people here simply prefer the noise and urban jungle of nearby Shanghai. He was frank in his view that the proximity to larger groups of people, social networks, commerce and the variety of job opportunities that exist elsewhere keep people from moving into these new, very expensive living areas. Another (right out of “The Truman Show”) town that was visited by students was Luodian Town, de-signed by Sweco FFNS, whose plan was based on the medieval town of Sigtuna, near Stock-holm. It was a rainy day and students were not too interested in spending much time there as it gave them similar feelings of abandonment and emptiness, even though the town was built few years ago.

The Students’ WorkWe entered this project with an open mind but with the understanding that the context of Chi-na is so complex that we will never completely understand enough to be fully confident with our knowledge of the country. This awareness instilled in us a sense of humbleness. In front of the small international group of students was an immense ocean of the unknown, challenges and potentials for design speculation that only made everyone more curious and excited. Most students had never been to China and were ea-ger to learn about the new cities that were built there. They were especially curious about well-marketed “eco-cities” as well as Chinese culture and the enormous transformations that the

Top row: Shanghai Green Towers Study. Student: Emili Carrero.

Bottom row: The new »Rurban« community, Chongmin Island. Student: Emili Carrero.

31

History and projections for future urban growth in the Shanghai region. Students: José Herrero, Xavier Espinas, Erik Fornander.

32

Chinese society is going through in the process of rapid urbanisation.

The course was structured in such a way that prior to the trip to Shanghai the students spent a few weeks learning about the basic principles of sustainability and worked on case studies in Stockholm’s Metropolitan area. Prior to the journey they conducted research about present-day China, Shanghai and Chongming and compared their findings with the investi-gation and proposals in relation to the Scandi-navian context. The differences in scale, as well as cultural and social differences, began to es-tablish a clearer picture about both places. This initial investigation was carried out to enable a better understanding of the context in terms of diversity of culture, society and economics, as well as political patterns that influence urban development. There was also an important em-phasis placed on the culture of building and the nature of urban space, the character of private and public space in Sweden and in China. We also tested the design process by reversing the planning process by starting at the micro scale and increasing in both scale and perspective. The students had to rethink and evaluate their conclusions every time they increased the scale of the project and different levels of complexi-ties were introduced and relations established. The process was sometimes a bit frustrating, but also exciting, and often produced unexpect-ed results. The idea was that while we were in Stockholm we should learn our own methods of

working which could then be further tested and developed on site on Chongming Island.

As we progressed with our research the more we found out and the more questions came up. The students worked on several scales reflecting on urban strategies that were based on the realities we encountered, such as the transitional spaces defined by the merging of nature, agricultural areas and urban areas. The proposals are largely based on the development of planning principles that take into account certain flexibilities and possible outcomes but with a clear vision. We tested several “what if ” scenarios from the perspective of contempo-rary realities of present-day Shanghai and the location. We focused on evidence reflected through the patterns of past and present ur-ban growth in China, economic, cultural and other important temporal realities, such as geological data, the regional and local econo-mies related to the island, modes of production and exchange, social structures, the nature of social and public space, population migra-tions and the culture of building in China. The Urban Studio investigative projects contin-ue this year with a focus on urban re-use. Dur-ing the autumn semester the first project site is in Hafen City, Hamburg, and during the spring semester we will be collaborating with the Chi-nese University of Hong Kong on the Kai Tak Creek Project in Kowloon, Hong Kong.¤

Green living – urban infill project, Chongming Island Town. Student:Tove Södersten.

33

Från Simmel till Google //Kalle Samulesson

Människor har alltid inordnat sig i nätverk. Dessa nätverk har sett olika ut under olika tider och perioder av teknologisk utveckling har fått till följd att dessa nätverk förändras eller utvid-gas. Den här texten undersöker tre källtexter som på ett eller annat sätt resonerar kring hur människor ordnar sig i en typ av nätverk som för tiden vid publicering genomgick just en sådan förändring. Tiden är det tidiga 1900-talet—spelplanen storstaden—och vår samtid, som i och med internets utveckling erbjuder en radi-kalt utvidgad spelplan.

Den tyske filosofen och sociologen Georg Simmel skrev 1906 en text som på svenska har fått namnet Storstäderna och det andliga livet. En text skriven i en tid när de stora städerna som en följd av industrialiseringen växte med en ohämmad hastighet och som därför på bara några decennier totalt kunde ändra skepnad. Det hade visserligen funnits exempel på stor-städer i tusentals år, men den storskaliga urba-nisering som pågick under 1800-talet var något helt nytt, ett fenomen som hörde den nya tiden till. Det andliga livet, som Simmel kallar det, har däremot funnits hos människorna sedan ti-dernas begynnelse, och däri ligger den konflikt som Simmel tar upp.

Arton år senare, 1924, skrev den schweiz-franska arkitekten och urbanisten Le Corbusier en text som i flera avseenden kan ses som ett ar-kitekturteorietiskt manifest för framtiden. Det heter på franska Vers une architecture (mot en arkitektur), men har i engelsk översättning fått namnet Towards a New Architecture (mot en ny arkitektur). Towards a New Architecure spänner över samtliga av arkitekturens skalor och verk-samhetsområden med ett avsnitt speciellt vigt åt storstaden och framförallt den framtida stor-stadens möjligheter.

Tolv år efter Towards a New Architecture pu-blicerades den tredje text som ligger till grund för den text du nu läser—Walter Benjamins

”Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit” som på svenska har fått namnet “Konstverket i den mekaniska repro-duktionsåldern”. Texten handlar om de teknis-ka landvinningar vad gäller allt från produktion till media, som gjordes under slutet av 1800-ta-let och början av 1900-talet och vilka implika-tioner dessa fick på spridningen av kultur.

De tre texterna ovan har tre tydligt definie-rade och skilda ämnesområden samtidigt som de beskriver ett större och mer svårgreppbart sammanhang från tre olika infallsvinklar. Lika lite som det går att resonera kring storstaden utan att förhålla sig till dess beståndsdelar—människorna –går det att resonera kring en individuell enhet, vare sig det är en människa eller ett konstverk, utan att förhålla sig till dess omvärld. Resonemangen formulerades förvis-so i början av 1900-talet, i en tid av stor sam-hällelig omvandling, men inte desto mindre fortsätter de, vilket vi kommer att se, att vara aktuella och genljuda in i vår egen tid.

Simmel skriver om storstaden som han uppfattar den i det tidiga 1900-talets Tyskland. Människan har i alla tider försökt att hävda sin individuella särställning gentemot omvärlden, men har aldrig tidigare ställts inför så mycket in-tryck och yttre omständigheter som hotar sam-ma särställning som i den tid då Simmel skrev sin text. Direkt sätter han sin egen tid i perspektiv till 1700- och 1800-talets utveckling, med poli-tisk, religiös och sedemera ekonomisk frigörelse för ett stort antal människor runt om i Europa. Simmel frågar sig hur det enskilda subjektet står sig mot den maskin som samhället i efterdyning-arna av dessa omvandlingar har blivit. Finns sjä-len kvar hos storstadsmänniskan?

När man söker efter det inre i det specifikt moderna livets produkter [...]—på det sätt jag skall göra vad gäller våra storstäder—måste man

Unter den Linden, Berlin. Bilden daterad till åren mellan 1890 och 1900. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA (http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2002713620).

35

undersöka de överensstämmelser, som sådana produkter skapar mellan livets individuella och dess överindiv-iduella innehåll (Simmel 1981, 195).

Naturligtvis finns själen kvar hos storstads-människan men den undertrycks av storsta-dens mekanismer eftersom individens själsliga sida av Simmel definieras som det som skiljer en individ från en annan. Storstadens mekanis-mer, vad beträffar allt från politik till handel, kräver att människor betraktas som anonyma enheter istället för individer. Simmel ser inte detta som ett problem på samma sätt som t.ex. Nietzsche, utan hävdar bara att individualite-ten måste dras mycket längre för att inte för-svinna i storstadens brus och passera obemärkt förbi de många kortare möten och relationer som är en del av storstadsmänniskans liv. Stor-stadsmänniskan blir därför, enligt Simmel, i viss mån en mer intellektuell varelse i förhål-lande till den mer emotionella småstadsmän-niskan—ett fenomen som andra har valt att be-skriva som att storstadsmänniskan är mer ytlig än småstadsmänniskan. Men, avslutar han sin text, hur det andliga livets utveckling kommer att arta sig kan bara framtiden utvisa.

Om Simmels åsikter om storstaden är am-bivalenta är Le Corbusiers desto mer absoluta. Eller snarare: Le Corbusier vet vilken typ av stad han föredrar framför andra, nämligen den stad han själv ritar. För arkitekten Le Corbusier var författandet av texter förmodligen inte ett själv-ändamål utan snarare ett led i konstruktionen av sig själv som den moderna skolans främsta urbanist. Därför behöver man inte heller läsa mellan raderna i Towards a new architecture för att ta del av vad han har att säga om den exis-terande storstaden: “Den täta massan av bygg-nader växer sig större, genomborrad av smala gator fyllda med oljud, avgaser och smuts (Le Corbusier 1986, 57)”. Le Corbusier skriver det aldrig rakt ut, men hela den del av boken som är vigd åt storstaden problematiserar något som också Simmel tar upp:

Storstaden skapar [mängder av in-tryck]—det sker varje gång man kor-sar gatan, och åstadkomms av tempot och mångfalden inom det ekono-miska, professionella och samhälleliga livet (Simmel 1981, 196).

Åskådarens öga blickar ut över en plats uppbyggd av gator och hus. Det registrerar hur massorna som reser sig runt omkring det spelar med varandra. Om [...] dispositionen av dessa uttrycker en ren rytm och inte ett osammanhängande gytter [...] vidarebefordrar ögat till hjärnan en koordinerad bild and hjärnan erhåller från denna bild ett storslaget behag: detta är arkitektur (Le Corbusier 1986, 47).

Storstaden är ett vimmel av intryck, ett oö-verskådligt vimmel. Le Corbusiers vision innebär att intrycken dämpas, allt planläggs rationellt och det oöverskådliga blir över-skådligt.

Om vi antar att visionen inte enbart kom-mer av ett behov av att rättfärdiga sin egen roll som arkitekt, kan vi då läsa den som ett tecken på att Le Corbusier reagerar mot den andliga förvirring som Simmel beskriver? Med i To-wards a new architecture finns en beskrivning av A city of towers, en vision för en framtida stad enbart bestående av glest belägna 60-vå-ningshus och motorvägar kors och tvärs i ett oändligt parklandskap. Kan det verkligen vara så att en stad totalt tömd på intryck blir en fruktsam grogrund för ett rikare andligt liv?

För att driva resonemanget vidare vill jag dela upp det nätverk som kallas storstad i två nätverk. Det nätverk vars ständiga behov av utvidgande skapade och fortfarande skapar våra storstäder är handeln. Städer har i alla tider mestadels uppstått kring marknads-platser, hamnar eller andra platser för kom-mersiell verksamhet. Det andra nätverket, som visserligen är vitalt, men inte i behov av ständigt utvidgande, är det sociala. Genom denna uppdelning kan också den problema-tik som Simmel tar upp förstås. Av Simmels beskrivning av storstaden framgår att de båda nätverken är djupt ihoptrasslade. I Le Cor-busiers framtidsvisioner är knutarna i största möjliga mån upplösta. Delvis rent rumsligt (det var meningen att dessa 60-våningstorn skulle innehålla all service som kunde tänkas nödvändig för de boende), och helt och hållet gällande funktion.

Produktion och handel var under ständig rationalisering, något som Le Corbusier helt

Unter den Linden, Berlin

36

säkert såg med blida ögon på. Det sociala livet lämnades däremot därhän. Le Corbusiers vi-sioner visar på en betydande rationalisering även gällande människors fritid, umgänge och kultivering.

Hans stad, hans gata, hans hus eller lägenhet ter sig värelösa [för den moderna människan], och hindrar honom från att följa samma mål under sin fritid som på sin arbetsplats (Le Corbusier 1986, 288).”

Le Corbuiser såg storstadens mångfald av intryck som något som tog uppmärksamhet från det verkligt sköna. Det första citatet ett par stycken ovan beskriver en betraktare som varsamt super in atmosfären på en plats, väger in varenda ljusskiftning, varenda geometriskt förhållande, som tar sig tid att riktigt penetrera en andligt krävande uppgift, och som därav får sin belöning i form av en skönhetskick. Det är raka motsatsen till mångfalden av intryck som enligt Simmel får till följd att “olika sätt att för-driva tiden och fylla ut medvetandet anmäler sig från alla håll (Simmel 1981, 207).” Le Cor-busier avslöjar sig även gällande rumslig dispo-sition med ett visst citat:

Kaféer och andra platser för rekreation kommer inte längre vara någon sorts ohyra som äter upp Paris trottoarer: de kommer att förflyttas till takytorna (Le Corbusier 1986, 60).

De ställen där social verksamhet sker i torn-staden är alltså ändpunkter i det rent rumsliga nätverket. Svåråtkomliga platser, omöjliga att besöka av en ren impuls, men utmärkta för att studera och kontemplera skönheten i ett ut-brett landskap. Kontentan: “A city of towers” erbjuder en tillvaro där storstadens nätverk är så att säga mer lågupplöst och mindre tilltrass-lat, för att inte förlora småstadens möjlighet till individuell, själslig kultivering i en miljö ratio-naliserad till det yttersta.

Le Corbusier ställer i slutet av Towards a new architecture ett ultimatum: arkitektur eller revolution. Antingen bygger vi om våra sam-hällen eller så gör intrycksbombardemanget att folk blir tokiga. Han skriver att människan måste acklimatisera sig till den nya tiden: “Pro-blemet är den anpassning där vår verklighet är satt i fråga” (Le Corbusier 1986, sid 288).

Onekligen framlägger han en viktig poäng i och med denna korta mening, men för att Le Corbusiers ultimatum ska bli aktuellt måste alltså den sociala sidan av människan acklima-tisera sig till industrins rationella principer, och inte till storstadens kavalkad av intryck som den tredje textförfattaren som jag har valt att titta på, Walter Benjamin, skriver i “Konstver-ket i den mekaniska reproduktionsåldern”:

De uppgifter som den mänskliga varseblivningsapparaten ställs inför under historiska brytningstider går helt enkelt inte att lösa enbart visuellt, alltså genom betraktande. De kan bemästras först så småningom [...] genom en tillvänjningsprocess (Benjamin 1991, 85).

Så var kommer Walter Benjamin in i bilden? “Konstverket i den mekaniska reproduktions-åldern” behandlar inte lika direkt som de andra två texterna storstaden och människorna i stor-staden, utan konstverket i den nya tiden. Or-saken till att konstverkets status har förändrats är de nya medierna som uppkom under 1800-talet, framförallt fotografiet och filmen, men även spridningen av tidsskrifter. Dessa medier går att reproducera på ett sätt som inte var möj-ligt innan. Detta får till följd att vad det än är som reproduceras så går någonting förlorat i processen. Man kan sammanfatta det som här faller bort i begreppet aura och säga: vad som blir lidande i den tekniska reproducerbarhe-tens era, det är konstverkets aura (jfr. Benjamin 1991, 64).

Alltså; för att möjliggöra att ett objekt når många människor går auran hos objektet förlo-rad. Ett resonemang analogt med Simmels tes: för att möjliggöra interaktion mellan många människor påverkas individens andeliv. Fak-tum är att de nya medierna tillfogar individen precis samma sak som storstaden, massvis av intryck, och alltså i någon mån kan antas jobba likartat mot det enskilda subjektet. Benjamin beskriver att en artefakt som reproduceras skif-tar i fokus:

I och med att [reproduktionsteknik-en] gör det möjligt för reproduk-tionen att komma mottagaren till mötes i hans egen miljö aktualiserar den det reproducerade. Dessa båda processer leder till en väldig

Kolorerad satelitbild av Berlin tagen den 22 augusti 2002. NASA:s "Image of the Day" den 9 januari 2004.NASA/GSFC/MITI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team (http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=4120).

39

omskakning av det traderade—en omskakning av traditionen som är baksidan av mänsklighetens nu-varande kris och förnyelse (Benjamin 1991, 65).

Artefaktens värde är inte längre traditionellt rotat. Istället blir relationen till betraktarens si-tuation det värdefulla. Det ska påpekas att Ben-jamin var marxist och såg potientialen hos de nya medierna, att skifta fokus hos konstverket från det rituella till det politiska. Det är intres-sant att här iaktta skillnaderna mellan Le Cor-busier och Benjamin. Le Corbusier såg också en fantastisk potential i de nya medierna, fram-förallt filmen som kunde beskriva arkitektur på ett helt nytt sätt. Le Corbusier lät ofta filma rundvandringar i sina byggnader, på ett sätt en sorts tavla med en extra dimension, tiden. Ben-jamin hyste däremot förhoppningen om att konstverket kunde gå från att vara Le Corbu-siers landskapsbild eller arkitekturvandring till ett medium för interaktion. En tydligt uttalad progressiv hållning i Simmels konflikt mellan individ och storstad.

Så hur tänker man kring storstadens ut-formning idag? Till att börja med kan man konstatera att interaktion människor emellan är den moderna stadsbyggnadskonstens mål. All stadsbyggnad som för människor samman är god stadsbyggnad. Det går även att tillägga att till skillnad från modernismens vilja att göra stadsstrukturen mer rationell vill man idag ofta åstadkomma det motsatta, mycket myller. Såle-des försöker man åter konstruera den stad som Le Corbusier skriver ner. Det har visat sig att de modernistiska experimenten gav upphov till områden som inte är integrerade, utan tvärtom segregerade. Det är stadsbyggnadskonst som undertrycker spontana korskopplingar i inter-aktionsnätverket.

Arkitekter och planerare känner nog emel-lertid att de måste hävda sig som experter på hur allas våra liv bör utformas lika mycket idag som under Le Corbusiers tid. Man sneglar längtans-fullt på vitala, blomstrande och myllrande stads-miljöer över hela världen, men vill kanske inte tänka på att vitaliteten ofta uppkommit spon-tant snarare än via en arkitekts penndrag. Till-vägagångssättet och verktygen idag inom stads-byggnadskonsten är ganska mycket desamma som under modernismen. Skillnaden är att hus-i-park har bytts ut mot kvartersstad, den typo-

logi som man ofta stöter på i förebildsområdena.Under tiden som planerare lägger pannan i

djupa veck för att fundera ut hur så många mö-ten som möjligt ska uppstå, pågår utvecklingen av en annan infrastruktur parallellt, en infra-struktur som ger upphov till miljarder möten varje dag.

Benjamins text är speciell i det hänseendet att den nästan verkar mer och mer aktuell för varje år som går. Detta trots att den ideologi som driver honom, marxismen, i all väsentlig me-ning kan sägas vara död och begraven sen länge. Le Corbusier, däremot, verkar trots alla fram-tidsförhoppningar hopplöst daterad. Vad är det som gör Benjamins text, och även Simmels, långt mer aktuell i vår vardag än Le Corbusiers? Den enda rimliga förklaring jag kan finna är att Benjamin och Simmel beskriver fenomen som tillför nya intryck till individen, medan Le Cor-busier framlägger en reaktion mot detta.

Det sätt på vilket inte bara kultur, utan all form av information, reproduceras har utveck-lats explosionsartat på ett sätt som Benjamin aldrig skulle ha kunnat föreställa sig. Trots det gör han en del framsynta iakttagelser. Storsta-dens infrastruktur för interaktion är i mångt och mycket ett myller kors och tvärs, ett fin-maskigt interaktionsnät. Fotografi, film och tidningar är medier som klarar av att likrikta mycket kommunikation, men då också enkel-rikta. En publik som ser en film på en biograf kan inte på något sätt kommunicera med skå-despelaren. Detta uppmärksammar Benjamin, och hyser uppenbarligen förhoppningen att denna gräns mellan avsändare och mottagare löses upp, något som den till viss del redan hade gjort i tidningssammanhang, i och med insän-darsidor, uppkomst av mindre, specialiserade publikationer, o.s.v. Detta till trots, de nya medierna fungerade i mångt och mycket som envägskommunikation ända tills för något de-cennium sen, då internet på allvar började rota sig som en viktig del av det mänskliga samhäl-let. I samma ögonblick blev både Benjamin och Simmel löjligt aktuella.

Internet som infrastrukturellt fenomen är helt unikt i att det erbjuder alla möjliga typer av interaktion, samtidigt. För första gången i världshistorien erbjuds en plattform för både den finmaskiga väven och motorvägarna. Det är en plattform där mötesplatser skapas av del-tagarna själva. Internet har ingen mästerarki-tekt som upphovsman. Allt är huller om bul-

Berlin, den 22 augusti 2002.

40

ler, men samtidigt bara en googling bort. Som nätverk betraktat kan det liknas vid Simmels beskrivning av en kaosartad stad full av intryck likväl som Le Corbusiers “A city of towers”.

Det finns idag en utbredd oro bland många människor att andra människor lever sina liv i för stor utsträckning via internet. Det är inte omöjligt att tänka sig att Georg Simmel om han levde i ytterligare 100 år skulle skriva en text med namnet Internet och det andliga livet. Det är inget märkligt med det, då internet har gjort för människors interaktion under tidigt 2000-tal vad storstadens framväxt gjorde un-der tidigt 1900-tal.

Simmel beskriver hur det andliga livet i storstaden underlättas av intryck som annonse-rar sig från höger och vänster, men samtidigt hur individen får möjlighet, och ibland också tving-as, att sträcka sig längre i försöken att särskilja sig från sin omgivning. Han beskriver också hur storstaden ständigt föranleder nya sätt att fram-häva sig socialt. "Ytterst leder detta till de mest excentriska underligheter, till storstadens speci-ella extravaganser i form av originalitetssträvan, nyckfullhet och förkonstling (Simmel 1981, sid. 206)”. Som Benjamin skriver:

I filmen är det mycket mindre väsentligt att skådespelaren inför publiken spelar någon annan än att han inför apparaturen spelar sig själv (Benjamin 1991, sid. 73).

Auran hos konstverket försvinner, det blir istäl-let ett medium för den rent mänskliga auran, det som Simmel beskriver som andeliv. Allt det som dessa citat beskriver ser vi nu inträffa i ännu större utsträckning på internet, där folk inte bara sköter sin ekonomi, utan också de-lar foton och läser varandras bloggar. Ständigt både skådespelare och publik på samma gång.

Det går alltså att konstatera att konflikten mellan individ och övergripande struktur har hängt med från Simmels tid till Googles, och

att samma principer gäller idag. Simmel for-mulerade konflikten strålande bra 1906. Sedan dess har folk under 100 år fortsatt att i högre grad bosätta sig i storstäder, att ruta in sig själva i större system, och allt tyder på att det fortsät-ter så i framtiden.

Det var produktionen och handeln som drev på framväxten av storstäder, och det var när det sociala livet kom i kläm som kritik började framföras. När stadsplanerarna idag ritar upp visioner för staden är det visioner i vilka männis-korna har ett rikt socialt liv, men också ett socialt liv som ofta är koordinerat med ett kommersiellt nätverk. Överallt är det handel som ska blåsa liv i stadsrummet, och överallt ska det sociala livet, symboliserat med ett café, inkorporeras i snart sagt vilken verksamhet som helst. Detta innebär inte att människor idag måste konsumera för att aktivera sig socialt, men det innebär att fler kopplingar görs mellan alla typer av aktiviteter, alla olika typer av nätverk.

Det avgörande för politisk, teknisk eller kulturell utveckling är mängden mänsklig in-teraktion. Därför fortsätter dessa att öka, i fysisk form i växande storstäder världen över, och i di-gital form i och med internet. Därför uppkom-mer ständigt nya kontaktytor som väver ihop människors sociala nätverk med kommersiella nätverk med kulturella nätverk med politiska nätverk. Därför känns Towards a new architec-ture, med sina beskrivningar av den lågupplösta tornstaden, långt mer daterad än Storstäderna och det andliga livet eller “Konstverket i den me-kaniska reproduktionsåldern”.¤

ReferenserSimmel, Georg. 1981. “Storstäderna och det

andliga livet” i Hur är samhället möjligt?. Göteborg: Korpen

Le Corbusier. 1981. Towards a new architecture. Mineola: Dover.

Benjamin, Walter. 1991. “Konstverket i reproduktionsåldern” i Bild och dialektik. Stockholm/Skåne: Symposion.

42

Early May 2010, a roundtable on the legacy of Archigram was held in the Architecture Library at KTH School of Architecure. The library has a sub-stantial holding of Archigram Maga-zine (as well as purchase orders and claim notes). What follows is a tran-scription of the discussion.

helena mattsson: In relation to the lega-cy of Archigram and its relevance today a book on the Swedish “people’s home” came to my mind—When the Future has Already Hap-pened by Jenny Andersson. She elaborates on how the ideology of the welfare state, and concepts related to it, turns into nostalgia, and becomes productive in the formation of a fu-ture politic. In a similar way images and stories of Archicram have almost become iconic and is still for many architectural students, or art students, considered as contemporary, and not mainly as retro. Archigram, as well as Super-studio, invented such strong images of the uto-pian future—images that never came through and therefore also always could exist as such.

daniel norell: I think one reason why, and I agree with Helena that it’s not that Archigram has a special relevance in 2010, is that what they did was broad enough, that there’s always something that you can find that’s hip about them, regardless of whether it’s 2010 or 1980. One thing that’s interesting in relation to what’s going on right now with Archigram, and in particular Archigram Magazine, is the idea of some kind ofculture of architecture, of alternative ways of practising architecture, that are not about being a practising architect in

the traditional sense where you make drawings of buildings, nor is it the traditional academic career, but rather getting your ideas about ar-chitecture through by other means and by other media. I think the idea about a telegram, a telegram about architecture is something that we can see happening right now in blogs, and I think architecture, or architects, was relative-ly late to start to use blogs as a medium. Right now there are many interesting blogs all over the world and because they, in a sense, is similar to Archigram Magazine, existing outside academ-ia, it’s difficult to track them all. But I also think that it relates to ways of getting things across that is reflected in things like the exhibition Clip Stamp Fold that Beatriz Colomina did with her PhD candidates at Princeton, where they were tracking a lot of small magazines on architecture. I think one reason why people are interested in this right now is how this relates to blogs and things like that.

jonas runberger: I think that’s one part of it. What also has kind of amazed me is that Archigram Magazine basically is the result of a practice. It’s not only about communicat-ing ideas. It's about the mode of practice; the collective assembly and dissemination of mate-rial in parallel to the delivery of exhibitions and events. On the one hand we have the blogs and all of that, which is about disseminating and dis-cussing and things like that, but the Archigram Magazine itself was a vessel for their practice. But on the other hand, when you hear them commenting on it, I think it’s apparent that what they wanted to do was to practise in a tra-ditional sense. They wanted to start their office,

Five Readings of Archigram 4 //Margitta Kylberg Helena Mattsson Daniel Norell Frida Rosenberg Jonas Runberger

43

which they did it in 1970, and so on. And it was when they were at the Taylor Woodrow Design Group, which I belive was a construction firm, they first met. It seems to me that this was the result of frustration in a way, and that what they actually wanted to do was to get into practice. I think it is always this kind of weird thing with Archigram; we really appreciate their unique mode of practice and what they wanted to do was, in fact, to make it happen in a more con-ventional way. They considered themselves that

85% of all the projects could have been done with contemporary technology and were in this sense not utopian. There’s this sort of relation between their projects, that we probably consid-er to be utopian, but that I don’t think they did. They wanted to make them, to a certain extent.

frida rosenberg: I think you’re per-fectly right and adding to what you said, that there are different layers to success or the influ-ence that Archigram had, many reasons why we still think it’s so contemporary and why we think that it’s still hip or something that we

would look at and celebrate as something very influential, probably relates Archigram to how someone like Peter Cook have had immense influence in education. He started teaching at the age of 27, and then went to Bartlett and created this dynamic between the Bartlett and the AA, which was very competitive and still is. So, influence are also related to their positions in education. But, just like you said, the other layer of success is that they have been portrayed as architects that were comic drawings about

potential realities, images that has the imagery of, and is similar to, science fiction. But I also think that many of the people in the Archigram group felt that they were put somewhere where they didn’t belong, they were not regarded as architects that could build. So the success had many layers to it.

staffan lundgren: I agree with you but it is also interesting to look at the aspect of the medium that they chose for this issue. They salute Roy Lichtenstein, and the issue obviously has a pop-art aesthetic. In that period it seems

Cover of Archigram 4.

44

like comics are regarded as a means of dissemi-nating to broader audiences. Perhaps similar to what Daniel was discussing and bringing to the fore about blogs today, so perhaps it’s also a mat-ter of reaching out and trying to communicate and also trying to create a relationship between architecture and society. In one way, a radical and new approach, but at the same time also being a part of current trends. This is the time of Lichtenstein, The Sitautionists, Constant’s New Babylon, and so on. It’s part of a bigger

movement in society which has to do with both art and architecture engaging with society by means of new ways of disseminating but also by new and different technologies.

jonas runberger: Just a quick com-ment! I always wondered if it was meant to be provocative in terms of the work, in the me-dium choosen and in the format used. I just noticed that Margitta brought out this, Yes is More!, the comic book by BIG, which I think is about dissemination and attitude as well. Bjarke Ingels compares himself with Philip Johnsson and a number of other people, in-cluding Barack Obama, in the beginning. But the rest of the format is no provocation at all.

It’s really all about disseminating and it’s about, in a popular sense, applying the comic-book principle to present work. Whereas in Archi-gram, I think there’s also meant as a provoca-tion, some kind of discussion at another level, in the way that the comics are used.

helena mattsson: One reason why we return to Archigram could have to do with authenticity and the relation between archi-tecture and media. I think it is hard to recollect images produced today by, for example Ingels

and Koolhaas. They are flashing before your eyes, together with an uncountable number of other images, and then they disappear. This is why we end up with Archigram again, by means of our memories.

staffan lundgren: So, is it a matter of memory then? I mean, what kind of ques-tion is Archigram and the nine issues of Archi-gram posing to us today? Is it necessarily the same question? It might also be of interest to be open to and to listen to what Archigram has to say, and not just to regarded as an artefact, but to ask what kind of questions they were pos-ing and how? Can we perhaps reformulate the questions and discuss them in a society with

Spread from Archigram 4 (inside of cover and page 1).

45

different kinds of formats for dissemination, and so forth. Margitta?

margitta kylberg: I think Archigram was very much an expression of the culture in the 1960s. I mean, this book is mainstream. Cartoons and comics are nothing special now, but to present these thoughts was really avant-garde at that time. You had other expressions within films, for example. You had the films about The Beatles: Hard Day’s Night and Help, they were also some kind of avant-garde expres-sion in the early 1960s. Just as these.

staffan lundgren: But is it not still interesting? The choice of comics as a way of dis-tributing or disseminating a message. I stum-bled upon a comic some year ago, that was part of a series, I think was published by the Catho-lic Guild of America, that they used as a way to educate the youth about the dangers of com-munism. We get to follow the development of Marx, starting as as a student of Hegel, and so on. Choosing this kind of medium to commu-nicate a message, I mean it’s probably not just coincidental, it could have a deeper meaning.

frida rosenberg: I think they realised that this form of communicating was very crea-tive, they were able to do more than to use plans and sections to communicate. You don’t even have to read through the Archigram issues, you just have to look at the images to understand what they needed to, what they wanted to, communicate. Going back to the question on how to read or use the ideas of Archigram today I think looking at the density of cities, how they are becoming more and more dense, you know, looking at these images and then starting to look at what is being built becomes a parallel. Archigram was blamed for being too techno-cratic and not humanistic enough but in many ways they were very humanist. Which really don’t come through in these images. But they are. I mean, look at these four towers that are published. If you look at the plans, which you really never pay attention to, if you pay atten-tion to the structure that’s there, that are actu-ally in the magazine, then you can also see that there was an intention behind these structures. So, there are many layers, a series of attempts to communicate in these magazines.

daniel norell: Another interesting thing about Archigram, despite the fact that the magazine is conceived as comic strips, and that makes these magazines relevant today, is that rather than focusing on some kind of es-

sence of architecture or focusing purely on things that are well rooted in the architectural discipline they also were, in my reading, very visionary in trying to propose large-scale solu-tions for environmental problems and how to make society better in a kind of funny, but at the same time very serious way. In the late 60’s and early 70’s you had the New York Five that I like to mention as I feel affiliated to both of the traditions myself. They were much more academic but much more dry and much more dealing with more traditional architectural questions. I think today what many people would like to see somehow are these kind of large-scale projects: environmental problems that gets solved by several nations collaborat-ing to solve a certain problem, that’s what the world needs somehow. I think that Archigram were on to that. And they were into vision-ary projects of that scale and land magnitude. Somehow I think that it is thought of like a fun-ny joke, like a funny Buckminster Fuller dome. But I think there’s also a lot of relevance to that, and a lot of intelligence.

helena mattsson: It is telling that Ar-chigram 4 was published the same year as Under-standing Media by Marshall McLuhan, and it picks up a lot of questions already raised by Nor-bert Wiener some years earlier in his Cybernet-ics: Or control and communication in the ani-mal and the machine. Questions of which still have relevance today, dealing with the boarders between human and machine, between a system and the individual, and so on. In Archigram this themes were elaborated more thoroughly in rela-tion to architecture than it had been before, even though the Independent Group had addressed parts of it earlier in the fifties.

staffan lundgren: What about the obvious reference to pop art, pop art is also a kind of comment on the periods developing consumer society, emerging in the States then leading the way for it, eventually hitting the shores of Europe. Any comments on that?

jonas runberger: My first personal encounter with Archigram came from my in-terest in comics. I still buy and read comics and I also read Science Fiction. And I read a lot of science fiction. Those are two pure interests of mine. When I started to study architecture at Chalmers in the early 1990s and was presented with a very pragmatic view of architecture, I didn't understand why it was important. And then I stumbled upon Archigram and many

46

other things, then I started to realise that archi-tecture can be about the things I dreamed about.

But I want to bring up the science fiction because obviously this issue of Archigram is a comic but also science fiction. While there are numerous references to science fiction and sci-ence fact, they really use references from pulp science fiction; the part of the genre often seen as of less value. It represents the popular culture of the time, and becomes in this way an interesting

playground for ideas. In contemporary science fiction studies there is the notion of extrapola-tion, which basically means that, based on what we know today, we could assume or imagine a transformed, plausible future scenario. And I think somewhere there is a link to what Archi-gram were doing, especially in the sense that the technology was around, and their projection into a future scenario was designed with their contemporary society in mind.

staffan lundgren: I’m a bit curious about the history of the school’s copies of Archi-gram. Margitta do you have anything to add?

margitta kylberg: Yes, I would like to say a few words about the holdings here. We have four of these nine and a half magazines. We have numbers four, six, seven and eight. Also, number five was bought but it has obvi-ously disappeared over the years. But I’m very

happy to find that we really have these copies because I have checked with our college librar-ies within Scandinavia we are the only one with holdings of the magazine.

staffan lundgren: Can you tell us anything about the copies we are showing here ?

margitta kylberg: They were bought in 1964, they were ordered. First of all I have to mention that this school and the library is a merger of two architecture schools, one in Rid-

dargatan and the other one on KTH-Campus Stuffevägen. These two schools were merged and then they formed this school and this li-brary. And yesterday I tried to find out from the archive when they started to stock magazines, and I found the order. So the order went to the school at Stuffevägen. Sven Silov was the pro-fessor there then. They ordered it, and it was in October 1964, and in March 1965 they sent a reclaim note that they had ordered it from num-ber one and they just got number four and five, so obviously number one, two and three were sold out already. And what we can find, if we listen to Dennis Crompton is that the former numbers, number one and two, were somewhat internal and that number four was the first one that was international because Reyner Banham took a few copies to the United States. Almqvist & Wiksell in Stockholm was on the list of book-

Spread from Archigram 4 (pages 2-3).

47

sellers that held Archigram. staffan lundgren: Any comments

with regards to that?helena mattsson: I flipped through

number six, seven and eight the other day, and I think it was in number six they had printed reviews from international press. Actually one Swedish review by Kurt Bergengren was published with the headline: “Pop is serious!” I think it was in one of the largest tabloids in Sweden—Expressen.

staffan lundgren: Can this tell us something about the climate of architecture in Sweden in the 1960s? Did everyone have a sub-scription of Archigram or is this unique. Can one find traces of Archigram influences in ar-chitecture?

helena mattsson: I don’t think so. I know that some translations of Lawrence Ala-way and the Independent Group was made in the 1950s, but it was very rare in fact.

frida rosenberg: I think if one would talk about influence with regards to pop art and architecture, one have to mention Pontus Hul-tén, at Moderna Museet as he brought many of the American shows to Sweden. I think Pon-tus Hultén might have been representing that kind of influence. Pontus Hultén was very good friends with Peter Celsing and in my previous

studies I looked at Kulturhuset and at how Peter Celsing did his sketches, he is using more paint-ings and aquarelles to describe his architecture. He is very much interested in the impermanent, architecture that moves, architecture that is not stuck to the ground. So, I think even if it’s not a direct influenc, the influence was brought there through other people.

staffan lundgren: Daniel and Jonas: being Archigram fans for quite a while, do you feel that Archigram has influenced you ?

daniel norell: Definitely.staffan lundgren: In what way?daniel norell: Let’s not forget that

the magazine was one side of Archigram and the other important side was installations and exhibitions The magazines served the purpose to test ideas. Other things they tested sort of live, by actually building whole environments in exhibitions and having people interact with them and immerse themselves in these envi-ronments. I think that’s one thing that, well maybe it’s a thing that young architects have al-ways been doing, certainly influenced me and I think a whole generation of young architects right now are exploring things through actually building installations, both because it’s a way of testing your ideas live rather than in a competi-tion—by submitting drawings for a competi-

Spread from Archigram 4 (pages 16-17).

48

tion or something like that—but also because it’s fast. Similar to the magazine or the telegram, it’s something that you can do in a short time span as opposed to a large building project.

staffan lundgren: You’re quick with the scissors?

daniel norell: Yes, exactly. I think when Jonas [Runberger], Pablo [Miranda], Marcelyn [Gow], Ulrika [Karlsson], and myself recently started thinking about Krets, the group we formed seven or eight years ago. Right be-

fore that was actually when we discovered these magazines here in the library, so I think that they definitely influenced us in some sense.

helena mattsson: It would be interest-ing to hear, a bit more precise, how it influenced your work, especially in relation to technology.

daniel norell: Well, one thing is of course that Archigram focuses a lot on tech-nology, but it’s not so much about, well tech-nology in the gadget sense, not so much about technology in terms of generating architecture, which I think was more of the Eisenman and New York Five line of thinking, so a difference between technology and technique. But today I think it’s not this opposition anymore be-tween experimenting with technology and ex-perimenting with technique, it’s actually what a lot of people do. And I also think it relates to a much broader question of programme and

form or word and form. I don’t think there’s a solution, but I think that many people are tired of that dichotomy between programme and form. One thing that you could be critical of in Archigram’s work is, and many people have raised this critique in the past, is that it’s very focused on technology and very positive about what technology can do for society.

jonas runberger: I was studying at the Bartlett for a year, not with Peter Cook, but he was obviously around and he’d been there

for a number of years, already transforming the school. The one thing he always talked about when he lectured was drawing. Which maybe relates to technique in a certain sense, but not to the techniques that I think you were refer-ring to. When seeing video footage of Archi-gram back then, it is interesting that the con-versation was not so much about the ideas but the putting together of the magazine. Maybe it is because that object, when it lies on the table, is so close to what it actually was when they pro-duced it. It’s almost like it’s a handmade thing, maybe the important thing is not that it’s hand-made at all, but the design procedures that they were taking on and obviously a lot of the work. The drawings are amazing! And there’s a lot of ideas and technology presented through the drawings. The past fifteen years have seen the discussion and criticism of the drawing com-

Spread from Archigram 4 (pages 18-19).

49

ing full circle; being replaces with the digital model, the rendering, the parametric system, and finally coming back again to classical rep-resentations—architectural drawings.

staffan lundgren: It’s interesting as this relates to the discussion on the distinc-tion between design and colour, which at least since the Renaissance has been elucidated at the academies of art. Design being something more than a line or a sketch, pointing towards a concept or idea.

tim anstey: I’m sure this has been asked already, but, just to follow up on Archigram in relation to some of the other people: I’m now very interested in Cedric Price. For me Archi-gram remaines completely bounded by a sort of classical frame of architecture as rhetoric and representation, which involves no element of testing. In the things Archigram did, there would just be pictures. Cedric Price is fascinat-ing in the sense that half of the work is bound within the rhetoric of the drawing (and the drawings are fantastic), but there are other bits of work which are just ‘reports’; a report about how you set standards or legislative parameters, very dry, very unsexy. This a piece of architectur-al production which has nothing to do with rep-resentation whatsoever. It’s all about testing, it’s really about technology. I’m just interested to see if there is anyone else that sees a kind of chasm between Cedric Price and Archigram? Because Cedric Price is someone who escapes, to an ex-tent, the boundry of rhethorical architectural representation. His work actually gets around and starts producing, which has nothing to do with this sort of representative way of communi-cating which Archigram really have.

staffan lundgren: We, had a discus-sion earlier about the medium and how they chose to communicate, and how this relates to the kind of directness and the well-disseminat-ed, well-spread medium of blogging today. Ar-chigram using comics as a mode of represent-ing their work. In a sense this enables a more or less unmediated contact with society as it is developing.

jonas runberger: Cedric Price is mentioned a lot and referenced to a lot, in the

Archigram material, right? But I totally agree that there is a big difference, especially in the Fun Palace and things like that, because they used the mode of representation so much. I mean they were practising, they were at the (Taylor Woodrow) design group. It seems to me that their representation was the mode of prac-tice that was their alternative, was alternative to them. I’m not sure of how that transformed when they started their own practice, but, it’s al-most like there’s an inexperience of the issues in practice, so to speak. I mean the understanding of processes of legislation, as you say, and so on. What remains in their own Archigram practice, is the representation, and obviously they did in-stallations, as Daniel was saying.

daniel norell: I’m not sure on how to pin down the difference between Cedric Price and Archigram. I’m not a historian, but I think that one way of trying to extrapolate the differ-ence between the two would be to think about who they are and who their disciples were. So from Archigram, and correct me if I’m wrong, came basically all the British high-tech archi-tects: Foster, Grimshaw, Rogers. But from Ce-dric Price came someone like Rem Koolhaas,

Participants: Jonas Runberger, Frida Rosenberg, Helena Mattsson, Daniel Norell, Margitta Kylberg

50

Cedric Price was Rem Koolhaas’s tutor at AA.I think that’s one example of how that tra-

dition was continued, two completely different tracks in fact. And I agree that work exclusively with representation, but I don’t think that dis-qualifies their work as a kind of test or some-thing. It’s a test, it’s like throwing an idea out there and seeing what comes back. I agree it’s not a test of a structure or the performance of something, but it’s a test of an idea. It’s polemic.

helena mattsson: A common inter-pretation is in fact that the Centre Pompidou is the building that made Fun Palace become real so the connection with high-tech architecture and Cedric Price is also very strong and an of-ten suggested interpretation .

daniel norell: So you’re saying that high-tech architecture is equally connected to Archigram and Cedric Price?

helena mattsson: That’s what I am saying!

daniel norell: Fine…frida rosenberg: Both Archigram

and Cedric Price are dealing with some kind of hyper-reality like Pottery’s think-belt that’s about functionality, and I think if you read through the images of Archigram it’s also also very much about function. But to return to who’s whose prodigy. You know both Richard Rogers and Foster went to Yale?

staffan lundgren: Questions from the audience or the panel?

jonas runberger: Just on Pompidou, the Archigram members refers to a bus trip there they made together, and they hated it. Because it was a total misunderstanding of their ideas; col-ourful pipes and stuff, that’s not the essence!

t im anstey: What I think is interesting is the way Norman Foster worked to start with: a real disinterest in representation. Certain things that Price challenges, the classic tropes of what makes architecture architecture, like that it should be authored, he doesn’t say it should be authored, it should be represented, he doesn’t like to represent things. Rather it is an interest in making architecture in its context fundamen-tally. I think this, in my reading, certainly ties, early Foster to Cedric Price. It intrigues me. Ar-chigram doesn’t seem to have any interest in con-text. And that’s the thing, that’s the thing, isn’t it?

staffan lundgren: Is the legacy of Archigram just the traces we might findin some practitioners, or is it bringing interest to a broader discussion? What is the legacy of

Archigram ,what would be a question that can pose to us today? Is there a question at all?

jonas runberger: I start to realise that to me Archigram is a mythology, in a way. It’s a quite hard concept to understand; com-plex, containing many things, thoughts, and ideas, and I don’t think it’s possible to break it down. But certainly many of the members also continued to push the myth. I am not saying myth in a negative sense, but they actually al-most built an ideology that is not completely well documented. A mythology of ideas and many different concepts.

frida rosenberg: They definitely contributed and contributes to the history of architecture. New books are coming out mak-ing analysis of their work and we are sitting here looking at their work.

helena mattsson: When I think of Archigram I think of the collage in a double meaning. Both as a technique, and as a visual and oral story intertwining history and future in a contradictory way.

daniel norell: I think one thing that we haven’t really talk about is that they don’t just present new or radical ideas, but also that they’re a sort of a chock. It’s like BLAM!!! POFF!!! ZOOM!!! It is a paring of something that’s very academic, the ideas about architec-ture, with something that’s very kind of down to earth, fun and popular.

margitta kylberg: That is in fact what I think I meant when I talked about the expression of the early 1960s. This is how I re-member it, I was there you know…¤

51

Fig. 1: Domenico Fontana, Della trasportatione dell’ obelisco vaticano (Rome, 1590). Frontispiece.

52

The treatise written by the 16th century archi-tect Domenico Fontana, Della trasportatione dell’ obelisco Vaticano, e delle fabriche di Sisto V, published in Rome in 1590, combines a re-eval-uation of architectural agency with a lucid de-scription of the experiential impact of construc-tion process. It is written, in part at least, to ad-vertise the judgment of Fontana as an architect and it conforms to the tradition such publica-tion required: Fontana stands as the author; the book combines text, costly production and fab-ulous illustrations; and it describes what, since the framing of architecture as an artistic and intellectual discipline at the start of the modern era, must be considered as architectural ‘works’.

At first glance the frontispiece to the book emphasises its alignment with this tradition. Here Fontana represents himself according to the idea of the architect that became common in Renaissance Italy, and which continues to colour our view to this day (fig 1). He is pictured in three quarter view, at a table bearing the tools essential to his calling, clutching an architectur-al body, that of an obelisk, to his breast. The sug-gestion one almost inevitably derives from this is one of ownership between the architectural ‘work’ and the architect pictured: the obelisk is very much Fontana’s, standing on his table among his other possessions. But on closer ex-amination disturbances are to be found in this reading. There is something strange both about the placing of the obelisk on Fontana’s table (balanced on the rear edge) and about the posi-tioning of Fontana’s hands. The right appears to have got caught up in the chain and medallion hanging around his neck—why, one wonders, must Fontana run chains through his fingers in order to hold the obelisk? And the fingers of the left hand appear to be in motion, as if hesitantly investigating something apt to escape, intangi-ble. What, then, is the ‘work’ in question here? How could the obelisk Fontana holds be con-sidered as emphemeral, light enough to hover off the table, hard to grasp?

Works are what people experience and judge when valuing the agency of an author. Thus the works of Shakespeare are the plays you hear; hearing the plays is what allows a judgement to be passed on Shakespeare as a dramatist. In architecture, works have tended to be identified with artefacts—objects, build-ings—and the representation of such works with a description of the design or intention that lies behind the physiognomy of those ar-tefacts. Twinned with this definition comes a tie of architectural authorship. Architectural works are things owned—identified by a pos-sessive ‘s’, as in ‘Le Corbusier’s Chapel at Ron-champ’ or ‘Bramante’s Tempietto’—and this creates an emphasis, evident in most architect’s treatises from Serlio to Le Corbusier, suggest-ing that architectural agency lands and has its final justification in an account of the building created as an object in the world.

In Della trasformatione dell’ Obelisco Vati-cano, the question of the architectural work is more complicated, however, and although Fontana appears to assert a tie of ownership in the frontispiece, the subject of this authority requires some consideration. Della trasporta-tione dell’ Obelisco Vaticano describes process-es as much as objects. Of the several projects described in the treatise the most spectacular, which gives its name to the book and which in-forms the frontispiece, is about moving a sin-gle piece of stone, the Vatican obelisk. Taken from Alexandria to Rome in 37 AD, where it formed part of the spina of the Circus of Nero, the obelisk stood throughout the middle ages directly to the south of the basilica of St. Pe-ter. In 1585 Fontana obtained the commission to translate it to a new location axially before the façade of the Church, then in the process of reconstruction. The work took exactly one year, from 25 September 1585 to 26 Septem-ber 1586 during which time the obelisk was moved a distance of around 250m, to the loca-tion it occupies today

Obelisks and Other Ephemera: Works, Artefacts, Processes //Tim Anstey

53

The ‘work’ created here is not exactly an ar-tefact, for Fontana added very little to the physi-ognomy of the obelisk. Indeed, the reverse was rather the case—his goal was to translate it with-out alteration or damage. (The risk-to-reward ratio this involved for an author-architect is evi-denced neatly in Michaelangelo’s determined refusal to take on the job: “Et se si rompesse?” he repeated to all entreaties (“And what if it breaks?”)). What was changed was not the ob-ject itself but its placing. And what was created through Fontana’s ‘work’ was the extraordinary process that moving the obelisk entailed. This could claim significance as an event—a staging, a happening in contemporary terms. But in the reading and writing of architectural history, to value an architectural work in this way is unu-sual. It is perhaps this condition that resonates with the hand gestures in Fontana’s frontispiece. Holding the obelisk was hard; both theoretically in terms of dignifying the action of moving it as a bonafide architectural work, and practically in terms of what actually had to be done.

Fontana’s task involved a combination of rotational, vertical and horizontal translation in which the vertical needle was first to be laid flat on the ground, then moved on a sledge to its future location, where it would be returned from horizontal to standing. Some small extra flourishes were anticipated: a better base to im-prove the obelisk’s proportion and a gold top-knot to emphasise its changed iconographical status as a symbol of Christian victory over pa-gan belief. However, the challenge to design lay in conducting this extremely basic geometrical operation with the limitations of the contem-porary technology. The strongest motive pow-er unit at the time was an horse or ox, capable of exerting a continuous force of around 125 lbs (50 kg) in an unsteady horizontal direction. The strongest cable able to transmit this force could take something over 20,000 lbs of ten-sion (8 tonnes, 40 times what the horse could move). But the obelisk was a single piece of stone 114 ½ palms high by Fontana’s calcula-tion (around 25 meters) weighing 963,537 35/88 lbs (Fontana calculates the weight to this precision), about 8000 times as much as a horse could lift through direct traction. Thus the richness in Fontana’s work, which was experi-enced by a crowd of thousands, was to establish sufficient force to lift, rotate and drag this gar-gantuan object with the means available (fig 2).

Representing ProcessFontana uses ten plates to explain this process.

These follow conventions of architectural drafts-manship: plan, section and elevation; perspec-tive; an isolation from and a filtering of con-textual information to communicate content. Since Serlio all these techniques had been used to represent architectural works as artefacts. Yet what is clearly articulated in Fontana’s depic-tions is not the final, static, monumental capac-ity of the obelisk itself, but the moment before this capacity is realised—the drama of ‘placing’ - or ‘displacing’ - what, for the eternalised dura-tion of the moment in the book, must be con-sidered a temporary, movable and ephemeral object. The drawings deserve to be studied as a series, but many of the qualities they convey, and the re-evaluations they imply, can be exempli-fied by looking carefully at one image plate 15 in Fontana’s text (fig. 3), is based on a plan rep-resentation of the urban space that surrounded the obelisk in its ‘original’ position south of the cathedral, that is to say the place it occupied before Fontana’s work, a rough piazza contain-ing the obelisk and a circular 4th century sac-risty (shown central and free standing on plan), edged by the construction of the church to the north and by dwellings to the south and east (whose walls show as fragments in conventional hatched plan convention). Within this space, in Fontana’s representation, a series of patterns are marked. At the centre is a cross of small squares marking the assembly of temporary piles that made up an enormous scaffold, the ‘castello’ built around the obelisk, in which Fontana would pivot and lower it. Filling the remaining space of the paper and the experiential urban space contained by the ‘permanent’ structures already mentioned, a further set of revolutions are marked. A series of 40 crosses—each circum-scribed by two concentric rings, each with a kind of piglet’s tail and mouse’s nose—are connected by lines to small circles that cluster in their turn in and around the squares marking the central cross. The clue to what all these bee-like, spi-dery, scuttling figures might mean, and to the significance of this picture in terms of urban ex-perience, is given by the sequence of images that supports, overlays and frames the plan view pre-sented in the picture.

Transient but PermanentIn this drawing Fontana makes visible that which is usually excluded from architectural representation—the temporary supports, tools, workers, scaffolding that allow mate-rial construction to come into being. Indeed, Fontana’s whole work revolves around such

Fig 2: Domenico Fontana, Della trasportatione dell’ obelisco vaticano (Rome, 1590). Plate 18.

54

55

56

objects, challenging that hierarchy that usu-ally privileges the representation the built over that of building. But because such an hierarchi-cal order was already inscribed into the systems of representation Fontana was using, he has to twist the rules of those systems to make his de-scription. The points at which he does so usu-ally betray where challenges are being made around the status of the temporary versus the permanent. In Fontana’s drawing as a result the binary opposition usually implied between the categories of the ‘permanent’ and the ‘tempo-rary’ appears to be expanded into a set of mi-nutely graded steps, where changes in the order of representation correspond to changes in the order of classification.

If one reads into the picture one starts naturally outside the plan with the scene at the base, which it seems provides both a fore-ground introduction and implicitly a foun-dation for the meaning of everything else (fig 4). Using naturalistic perspective convention, this scene represents only things that move and whose manifestation is temporary—animate stevadores, horses, whips-in hand circumam-bulate an inanimate windlass. As one moves from the perspective scene into the plan draw-ing it is clear that each one in the swarm of cir-cles filling the space in the plan represents such an assembly. In this translation from perspec-tive to plan, however, the most ‘temporary’ objects are lost to the conventions of represen-tation (the people and animals disappear) and what remains marked on the paper is the out-line of the inanimate objects on which they ex-ert force—windlasses, ropes and the rotational track of the moving figures (fig 5). So the first stepping point highlighted in this combinatory drawing is that between animated objects (that move freely and diurnally; they go home at the end of the working day) and inanimate ones—winches and ropes.

The next step that one can impute is one be-tween varying orders of permanence in tempo-rary objects concerning whether their job is to move—rotationally or linearly, providing mo-tive power—or to guide movement—to resist force and orientate translation. The articulation of this spatio-temporal step between classes of transience and permanence is also built into the representational convention of the picture. It’s evident in the ways in which the windlasses are represented compared to the “castello” or scaf-folding that surrounds the obelisk. The slippery nature of the windlasses is indicated by their contrasting degrees of rotation relative to the axis of the picture. The ‘fixed’ and fixing nature of the castello orientates its cross orthogonally on the paper, giving a kind of cardo and de-cumanus to the composition. If the castello can be seen as the stationary element around which all the other urban structures revolve, one also notes that in its representation only fixed items concerned in the movement of the obelisk are shown. There is therefore a very subtle change of drawing convention between the windlasses and the castello; in drawing the latter, the lines representing the mobile rope disappear and only the beams that will support the obelisk and the pulleys that will channel the motive forces in the cables are shown (fig 6).

The castello, which anchors the picture, might be seen as a kind of pin connecting the worlds of building (as an action) and buildings (as artefacts)—or perhaps one could say as one side of a central link in the chain of connec-tion the drawing suggests between the class of the temporary and the class of the permanent. Like the windlasses the castello is a temporary manifestation—it existed during one year in two different locations. But its classifica-tion as ‘temporary’ becomes complex, for its most important feature, in fact, is its absolute permanency in relation to the enduring mo-

Fig. 3: Domenico Fontana, Della trasportatione dell’ obelisco vaticano (Rome, 1590). Plate 15. Fig. 4: Plate 15, detail. Perspective view of animate and inanimate actors. Fig. 5 : Plate 15, detail. Windlasses and cables.

57

ment in which the obelisk must be lowered from vertical to horizontal. In this operation one thing is certain: that the castello must not move. Indeed, any movement in it would spell ruin—both to the object being translated and to the architect of the process-work in question (intriguingly, Fontana is said to have planned for this eventuality by posting teams of horses across the country to facilitate his escape). Thus the castello derives an aura of permanence through its task of resisting and modulating forces that are absolute and permanent. And so the orthogonal propriety of this object in rela-tion to the axis of the picture rests on a strong sense of decorum; Fontana’s drawing is orien-tated around that object that orientated this section of the whole event.

The detailed plan superimposed, at larger scale, midway up the picture, which shows a re-flected view of the castello’s ‘roof ’ (the under-side) from which the obelisk was to hang, sug-gests a further step in this sequential unfold-ing from temporary to permanent (fig 7). The main part of this plan continues the representa-tional convention indicating blocks (doubled pulleys are shown with a doubled ellipse) and beams that were to channel forces. But at the centre the obelisk is revealed for the first time, heavily hatched, and shown in inverted plan projection to the rest of the detail—that is to say viewed from directly above as opposed to beneath. This representational flip occurs as one moves within the frame of this plan from considering a temporary and transient con-struction that must be considered as absolute and permanent for the process in the picture (the castello) to a permanent and fixed edifice that must suddenly be interrogated in terms of its transient potential (the obelisk that is the subject of the movement in the work).

If one lifts one’s gaze again to encounter the framing device of the picture as a whole one realises that in order to navigate this ex-treme slip-plane between artefacts of inverted logic a further mediating device is needed. In

the four elevational views that frame Fontana’s drawing one is never permitted to view the ob-elisk directly (fig 8). Each view is protected by a sheathing layer, lying between the obelisk and the castello, the obelisk and the viewer’s eye, and between the obelisk and harm. Following elevation convention, the representation here is nearly lifelike again, showing the blocks and tackles that will move the object, the detail of iron connecting rods and bindings, the shad-ow relief on the bundled timbers. As well as an evident tie to the conventions of representing bodies at the base of the picture, there is some-thing ornamental about these images. And in-deed, in the original sense, ‘ornament’ is exactly what this additional layer of stuff that acts in the zone of tolerance between temporary and permanent is. The bundled timbers and straps surrounding the body of the obelisk allow it to perform in the theatre of construction that Fontana demands it enters; a kind of armour devised to absorb the shocks and slings of com-bat. Together this assembly of straps and pul-leys and timbers creates the device that allows a translation between two contrasting notions of the absolute—the one ‘temporary and per-manent’ (an obelisk that will last until the end of the world but that may well move) the other the constructional and platonic (a network of forces that act on this object and condition its placing, manifest in the castello that will last a year but in which movement is untenable).

Permanent but TransientFrom the clothed obelisk it is possible to de-scend into the plan drawing of the picture again to follow a further set of steps. Where the drawing up to now has communicated the absolute, and in platonic terms ‘permanent’, nature of the seemingly transient (windlasses, castello), it now relates the temporariness of ap-parently permanent structures. This transience to be found in the permanent (the obelisk may move) develops in the next set of representa-tions to re-affirm and follow an equivalent set

Fig. 6: Domenico Fontana, Della trasportatione dell’ obelisco vaticano (Rome, 1590). Plate 15, detail. Castello in planFig. 7: Plate 15, detail. Superimposed plan, castello roof .

58

of steps to those which lead from the moving horsemen to the castello. As has been obser-ved, the actions and apparatus for moving the obelisk occupied a space that is described in the picture, a rough urban suqare defined by per-manent, probably stone, buildings. Yet every single ‘permanent’ structure represented turns out to be in the process either of construction or demolition. Directly above the castello at the centre of the plan, and heavily hatched, stand the walls of the circular 4th century sa-cristy, gashed top and bottom by the invisible and partial path of the obelisk as it is lowered to horizontal. Away to the bottom left of the plan, walls and towers of houses close the space at the bottom of the paper, but others have been de-molished, Fontana explains in the legend, to make space for the operation. At the head of the picture (the composition is closed by a timber paling) fencing must be removed to allow ac-cess to the ‘sledge’ that will later transport the obelisk to its destination. Finally, to the right of the drawing stands the church around all which all this activity will take place, shown as two separate and disconnected things. In the upper section of the plan is the new construc-tion around the dome of S. Peters; in the lower section, the wall of the Constantinian basilica, in the process of demolition. Any hierarchical order assumed between permanent structures and their ‘transient’ construction is challenged in this drawing, then. The permanent condi-tion recorded concerns not only the absolute nature of the context of forces that produces change in buildings—that moves materials and re-places objects—but the constant trans-lation, removal and transience of what we usu-ally think of as solid built works that these for-ces act upon.

Theatres of ConstructionIt should be emphasised that Fontana’s treatise is not a projective set of instructions about how to move the obelisk. It is, rather, a reflective ac-count a posteriori (and three years in the mak-

temporary animate, moving [stevadores, horses,wips]

temporary inanimate, moving [windlasses, ropes]

temporary inanimate, fixed [Castello, bloCks]

permanent antique, moving [obelisk]

temporary ornamental, moving [sheath of bundled

timbers and metal straps]

permanent antique, altered [saCristy]

permanent fragmented, demolished [houses]

permanent fragmented, ConstruCted [ChurCh]

Table of permanence, extended chain of classification in fontana’s drawing.

Fig. 8: Domenico Fontana, Della trasportatione dell’ obelisco vaticano (Rome, 1590). Plate 15, detail. Obelisk elevation .

59

ing) about having moved it. To the contempo-rary eye, this account seems valuable precisely in that it curates and makes visible an aspect of urban experience that is often neglected both in representing and planning cities. That is to say, in their emphasis on describing built or social constructs, many systems of repre-sentation have difficulty in accounting for and acknowledging the centrality of the tem-poral process of construction for the idea of a city. It might be suggested that such events hold a secondary status, cannot be viewed in the sense of structural phenomena with which urban thought must deal. However although the experience Fontana conveys is partly emo-tive - horses strain, windlasses creak, hemp cable groans - behind this lies a choreographic scheme; fixed relationships of contract and risk; links that, although not manifest per-manently in any one location, have their own kind of permanence through repetition. The phenomena amounts to another kind of urban pattern replete with its own tightly controlled formal structure, and Fontana’s drawing sig-nals the urban presence of these ‘discovered’ permanencies that are implied by the invisible path of the obelisk or the rotations of the tem-porary windlasses.

To record this and to give it virtue (which is what Fontana attempts in his treatise) is to do a number of interesting things, then. Fontana is obviously interested in architecture as an ac-tion, as the ‘placing of material’—a celebration of process that is very relevant today, but that is rather neglected both in the writing and the reading of architectural history. In reevaluating architectural agency, our acknowledgement of the management of such webs will become increasingly central. What is striking about the text that accompanies Fontana’s drawings in Della trasportatione del’ obelisco Vaticano is how it shows in beautiful, sequential detail every ac-tion needed in order that this single moment of translation could come to be. And what is most striking of all is the continuity it implies be-tween considerations of what might be termed the ‘technical logistics’ of process and an aware-ness of the urban implication of these processes in terms of experience. The text reviews tech-nical and mathematical details; bureaucratic machinery; spectacle, including who the au-dience was; and religious rites—all as a single story. In that respect it binds these concerns together into an idea that must still be interro-gated in terms of urbanity, architects, authors and works.

Fontana’s description of the logistic back-ground to the project has the same panoscopic fascination that emerges in life cycle cost analy-sis today. Indeed, the significance of the archi-tectural ‘work’ articulated in the drawings only really emerges as you understand the entire context of legislative, economic and ecological agency that was necessary in order to support it and which is revealed in the text. Working out-wards from the obelisk Fontana lists: the calcu-lations in building statics made to estimate its weight; the design of the timber castello that should bear and rotate this mass; the sourcing and geographical transport of the timber; the papal bulls required to secure the commodities involved and assistance at the right price; the estimate of the number of horses (and therefore the amount of horsepower) required as motive force; the breaking strain of hemp cable; the supply of the hemp; cable manufacture; the stabling of the horses; the removal of men; the provision of foodstuffs et cetera. As one reads one understands Fontana’s awareness that this ‘pregnant’ moment of moving the obelisk, like a piece of military strategy hanging in the bal-ance, is at the centre of a national network of supply, transit, climate and administration that is and must be ongoing (fig. 9).

Domenico Fontana’s drawings and text constitute very particular documentations of the city, therefore. While they can be read with-in a convention that sees the city as a sculptural object, amassed from permanent forms that cre-ate space in which spectacle must be staged, they also succeed in articulating an almost inverse relationship between construction and urban process. I would like to be able to say that this ‘special’ moment enshrined in Fontana’s text is indicative of a general condition of experience of the urban realm; that in some sense every act of construction contains an echo of this condi-tion, which is amplified and magnified in the story of the obelisk. Clearly such an argument does not necessarily follow; undoubtedly Fon-tana’s achievement was a meaningful act in a way that many construction acts are not: it was theologically loaded and perhaps the nature of its curation is explicable only in terms of this cultural importance. The event was also theatri-cal in a way that many constructional acts can-not be. Fontana’s description in Della transpor-tatione dell’ Obelisco Vaticano, together with the other apocryphal tales and images that accom-pany it, reveal this nature of spectacle—a crowd of thousands, silence on pain of death, ‘pianti di genti’, a trumpet signal, a lone voice.

60

Yet we think that, perhaps one is justified in pointing to an hereditary link between such titan accomplishments and contemporary acts of building, particularly if one is seeking to un-derstand the pressures that are being exerted on architectural agency today, and if one wants to understand how such agency might be usefully formulated in the future.

To shift one’s emphasis from an under-standing of architectural authorship as the crea-tion of magnificent works to valuing a micro-scopic understanding of process; to think of the management of change rather than the celebra-tion of result; is to shift how one values a Le Cor-busier or a Cedric Price, or more latterly a SHoP architects in New York or a Lacaton & Vassal in Paris. This shift of emphasis is important now. One of the permanencies of urban habitation is a continuous programme of construction activity—and though ubiquitous, these as-

pects of urban experience are likely to become increasingly on our minds. What materials we use to build cities, what we have to do to them in order to make them serviceable, where they come from and the ways in which we join them together and erect them—all these questions are suddenly fraught with potential. In this condition the endeavour to ‘curate’ this con-cern, to articulate and therefore make central to ‘everday’ experience the technological, ‘carbon significant’ processes on which urban habita-tion depends, is an important one. Buildings and design processes are having, increasingly, to make manifest the methods and materials of their own construction, a requirement put in place by the, perhaps rather dry, but surely fundamental propositions of the new building codes. In this concern the theatre of construc-tion constitutes a vital arena in which such awareness of process might be made general.¤

Fig. 9: Domenico Fontana, Della trasportatione dell’ obelisco vaticano (Rome, 1590). Plate 28.

61

Spread from Modus Operandi, Architectural Desires, edited by Weronica Ronnefalk and published by KTH School of Architecture in 1995.

62

The Death of Architecture (1995) 1

The emblem for the School of Architecture in Stockholm is the well known drawing by Leon-ardo, depicting a man inscribed in a circle and a square. Leonardo is here illustrating the hu-man proportions according to Vitruvius, whose text on the subject is included on the original. It shows a man, looking at us with a severe and self assured expression, while the absolute logic of geometry is proving his body fit to be the meas-urement of the world. What we see is the birth of Man in the spirit of Humanism. Until then God had been the guarantee of order in the world, and Man was left to act according to his Law.

With Humanism Man began the ven-ture of writing his own Law, interpreting the world according to his own concepts and his own physical body. In a sense this was also the birth of Architecture. Before the renaissance, what Man built, can more or less be regarded as adjustments of nature, given by God. But Humanism created a gap between the world of God and the world of Man, between the real and the artificial, which severed Architecture from nature. Leonardo’s has given us a double exposure, showing the birth of Man and the birth of Architecture, in one picture

But is the severe expression in the mans face caused by pride, or is it pain. If we take a look at Leonardo’s drawing again, it’s very hard to tell if it is Man that is giving shape to the geo-metric forms, or if these are shaping him; are they describing Man or are they limiting him. Humanism freed Man from ignorance, but freedom had its price. Under the Law of God, Man always knew right from wrong and was well aware of the limits to the role given to him. With Humanism it was Man that had to for-mulate the Law, to create a new understanding of both the world and himself. In this, Archi-

1. “The Death of Architecture” was first published in Modus Operandi, Architectural Desires, edited by Weronica Ronnefalk and published by KTH School of Architecture 1995.

tecture was to play an important part, since it was the medium in which Man could give shape to this world of his own. So Leonardo’s drawing is also showing us the new state in which Humanism put Man; whenever he tried to lay down a rule for himself, or whenever he tried to express who he was, he was also express-ing the limits of himself; the borders he could not pass, the rules he could not break. It seems like Man in Leonardo’s picture, while shaping a world to live in, also is building his own prison.

But Leonardo is also expressing something essential in Architecture. Whenever you build you are creating a world according to your will, but at the same time defining the limits of this world. Architecture makes man choose: What world is he going to build? And in choosing to build one world, he is also choosing not to build other worlds. Now, since building through histo-ry has been a privilege, the more relevant question is rather: Who’s world are we building? Which is a question that formulates the political sense of Architecture. Further, the world chosen will also be a representation of our understanding of ourselves as humans; so we can also rephrase the question thus: Who is telling me who I am? We are then formulating a political sense of the self.

This political sense of Humanism is often forgotten, but since there no longer was a power outside Man that was writing the Law, but Man himself, the world had become thoroughly po-litical. The Law could no longer be considered absolute but relative; always biased by some ideology according to how Man chose to un-derstand the world and himself. Man’s way of getting rid of this burden was through invent-ing a new god, knowledge, or more specifically science. Different ways of accumulating knowl-edge, natural studies, experiments, rational reasoning, freed man from the responsibilities of the new Law. Through knowledge man also managed to hide the utterly political state of the world, replacing a series of difficult political choices with a set of absolute truths. Truth that

The Death of Architecture, The Architecture of Death //Lars Marcus

63

earlier was guaranteed by God, was now guar-anteed by science. This put knowledge in the powerful position it has kept up to our days.

As for the relationship between Architec-ture and knowledge, it’s a history not yet writ-ten. Yet we know that the spirit of Humanism gave birth to a series of treatises on Architec-ture, as well as an intense study of the redis-covered Vitruvius. These treatises managed to define Architecture as a discipline of its own, based on knowledge, and were to shape the rules of Architecture for centuries. It’s impor-

tant to remember how they not only were the fundament for the design of buildings, but also were applied to the scale of cities. This consid-ered, it’s hard not to see the power of knowl-edge and the political impact of Architecture.

Common to all these treatises was the hu-manistic ambition of relating Architecture to the experience of man and more specifically the body of man, letting it be its measure. But as Leonardo’s drawing shows, this means that Architecture also will be measuring man. Liv-ing in the man-made world of houses and cit-ies, Man will always be measured or even put to a test by Architecture. Architecture becomes the norm which tells Man what he ought to be! It’s not just a matter of the body; Architecture is the world in which Man lives, the background to all his experiences, the stage where his life is set! For a long time though, Architecture was a rather crude measurer of Man, but the modern era was to refine the technologies thoroughly. The knowledge of the human body, Man’s sens-es, psychology and needs grew rapidly, forming a powerful force that extensively was to be ex-pressed in architectural form and space. Mod-ern Architecture set a political stage that in

every detail shaped, measured and tested man. The more mans knowledge of himself grew, the stronger the prison walls were built.

It’s quite obvious that Man today is trying to escape this prison of his own making; the world that left him wit the truth, nothing but the truth. Through disguises, aliases and role playing he is searching for freedom again, be-yond Humanisms truths of the self. “I am not the one you think I am, I am only what I pre-sent as me.” We can see it in the super humans of Madonna and Michael Jackson, but also in

the everyday exercises of jogging and weight-lifting, as well as in the different courses in per-sonality improvement, common these days.

In Architecture accordingly, there is a search for buildings and spaces not related to Man, that does not measure the body, stimulate the senses in a preconceived manner or in any other way tries to manipulate. In short an Architecture that does not have the ambition to tell me who I am. A post-human Architecture. This search leads us to new fields of Architecture, like industrial buildings, designed not for humans but rather the production of ships or the refinement of steel. It makes us find cathedrals of non-human space under the bridges of our motorways, dra-matic form in high-tech utensils, sensuality in the materials of advanced machinery. It’s the aes-thetics of an Architecture that no longer tries to be Architecture that no longer tries to relate to the experience of Man, that relieves Man from the truth of himself and makes it possible for him to appear according to his choice. We seem to be trying to find a world where you can choose who you want to be, where it is alright to form your life into a piece of art; a world already con-ceived in the virtual worlds of computers.

Architecture as representation and the

shadow of death that follows, is an inherent consequence of the unreturned love for

art that has dominated Architecture for centuries.

64

But at the same time, this seems to threaten the well defined discipline of Architecture ex-pressed by humanist minds. Modern technol-ogy is reconstructing the world and letting it be born a-new through translation into the modern medium of information. This is in a sense the re-vival of nature in the form of technology, which like the nature given by God, does not draw a line between artificial and real. It’s a new para-dise were Man is to machines what bees are to flowers. The great disciplines of knowledge are swallowed by nature again. On the other hand, it is also the fragmentation of the political to the micropolitcs of the network, never to reach a public. But for the time being, we seem relieved; Leonardo’s drawing is obsolete, the spell broken and Man set free from the geometries of knowl-edge. As for Architecture, not able to defend its territories or defining its boundaries, what we’re witnessing is nothing less than its death.

The Architecture of Death (2011)The true paradox here is that Architecture has always been about Death, it was born from the very practice of building graves and monu-ments, starting in innocence but soon reaching magnitudes, like the pyramids of Egypt, still to be surpassed in architectural power. Archi-tecture is not about building, it is about tell-ing a story in brick and mortar about building. In Architecture there is always a double, the building and the story of the building, this is what distinguishes it from building in general. This inherent need to tell the story about itself is the source of the tragic Midas touch so typi-cal for Architecture. The Greek temples, the Roman forums and the Gothic cathedrals, all mark the moment when a rich social and cul-tural expression, be it religious cult, republican interaction or the gospels of a new God, are be-coming formalised and institutionalised, that is, the moment when rigor mortis starts to set in. In one sense it is the cruel laws of existence, where everything that enters the world needs to take a shape and present a face, and the in-evitable fact that that face cannot help but have a message. But in Architecture this message is consciously and professionally dramatised, the face painted, by the architect.

Architecture is about representation, rep-resentation of Architecture itself or the lives it tries to house. But representation of life is not life, it’s a sign for life, perchance a beautiful sign, but a sign still. Therefore, Architecture is always an avatar, the real thing is never there, Architecture replaces the real for its sign, life

for its image, why Architecture always is a kiss of death. Or so the story goes. Architecture as representation and the shadow of death that follows, is an inherent consequence of the un-returned love for art that has dominated Archi-tecture for centuries. In art everything is about representation, about enhancing the experi-ence of the world by the means of a representa-tion, intensifying certain aspects of the world at the cost of others - primarily the cost of life. This is a juvenile love affair where the party of Architecture does not yet know itself and its full potential. There is a representational di-mension to Architecture, certainly, but that is only where its story begins. As discussed above (17 years ago), we do not live in a god given world, a natural world, but an artificial world to a large extent defined by Architecture. Ar-chitecture is what surrounds modern life, it sets the frame of our everyday lives, supporting certain things, limiting others. Where art can represent the world, Architecture constitutes the world. Let us say that again, where art can represent the world, Architecture constitutes the world, something art can only envy. So why then diminish the potential in Architec-ture to its representational side, why settle for an Architecture of death when the originality in Architecture lies in its ability to support and structure life itself, to be an integral part of life but in a slower medium. We are then not talk-ing about the representative side of Architec-ture, but its performative side, the side where Architecture does not turn the world into signs, but helps the world come alive.

But such Architecture takes knowledge, knowledge of many kinds, but critical is knowl-edge of ones medium. Any professional must know her medium, why else bother with her. For the performative dimension in Architec-ture the medium is architectural space, that is, space structured and shaped by architectur-ally designed form. But the plastic character of space makes it elusive, seem simpler than it is. The secrets lies in the fact that what sets the lim-its to architectural space is not what is geomet-rically possible, but what is socially possible, and to understand these limits we must know the social logic of space. That is the knowledge necessary for an Architecture that is to escape death, an Architecture informed by the fact that in the end, life is right.¤

65

66