OBJECTIVISM AND PROGRESS

Atlas. Lee Lawri, 1937.

The past week the book and movie "The Fountainhead" were brought to discussion, which made me want to go a little further in other aspects that specially the book stands for, since most of them deal directly with the architect's profession and the city.

Ayn Rand, the author, was the founder of the philosophical system called Objectivism, and both of their most famous novels, "The Fountainhead" and "Atlas Shrugged", are considered the beginning of it. The main concerns of Objectivism deal with the role of the mind and consciousness in men's existence, culminating to the moral of the rational self - an interest, that one's life goals are achieved by pursuing his/her own happiness. But the aspect that interests me the most is the individuality against collectivism. In opposition to the last, the former praises the existence of strong and individual characters, almost heroes, that with the exceptionality of their ideas and acts are the responsible ones to move the humankind forward. In other words: progress as a result of punctual efforts, not the mobilization of the masses.     

Tracing a parallel with architectural practice, there have been attempts to question the authorship of projects. Eisenman approached it by creating a system in which the process takes over the architectural object, and many contemporary approaches to architecture as research claim that the multidisciplinary team developed the entire design together.

As much as I personally would really like to believe in the collective authorship and achievements of these projects, every time I analyze the process in which these pieces have been through, I aways still identify at least one spark, one moment where one subject took over and made an important design decision to the project. Maybe this spark is necessary, it just does not diminish the importance of the collective to bring progress to reality. 

SOMEWHERE, EVERYWHERE, NOWHERE

Her (2013) Warner Bros. Pictures

The atmosphere created by the scenario on a movie is often used as a way to strengthen its plot. By selecting particular cities and particular sides of a city, filmmakers are able to enhance the representation of the characters' moods and conflicts. In science fiction and fantasy movies like V for Vendetta, Blade Runner and 1984, for example, cities are many times portrayed as dirty and oppressive dystopian scenarios, where people must fight to survive. What better way to portray hope, for instance, than with such a contrasting setting? On the other hand, many filmmakers, like the American writer and director Woody Allen, use a specific existing location, as a mean to depict the lifestyle of a particular time and place. However, in a few recent mainstream productions, I have observed an interesting tendency of filming a movie over multiple cities, as if they were all the same city. 

Films like Blindness (2008) or Her (2013), are good examples of movies that take advantage of this resource. By doing so, the scenario in which the movie is set gives space to the characters and the story to develop without being site-specific. Fernando Meirelles' Blindness, for example, was filmed in the cities of São Paulo, Toronto and Montevideo. The option of not showing one particular city shows that for this movie, the city is not a protagonist. It is merely an ethereal backdrop for the action to develop. As if, since nearly everyone in the film has become blind, without the visual aspect, to all other senses, every city is the same as all other cities. This very same resource is used in Her. While in this movie, the city is referred to as Los Angeles, one can not actually recognize the city in every scene. That is because scenes are overlaid with footage of Shanghai. By doing so, the image of an ideal city is created. In Her, the future city of Los Angeles is a globalized utopian metropolis. It is a calm, convenient and comfortable city. The raised walkways, clean skyscrapers and little traffic create the image of a sterile future. Fitting perfectly to the theme of lacking interpersonal communication explored in the plot.

In both films, by showing a collage of cities that are close to our reality, yet unrecognizable as a whole, the filmmakers end up creating an interesting perspective of the times we are living in: when everywhere can be reached at all time, even the most particular places can become somewhere and nowhere at the same time.

BROADACRE CITY

Frank Lloyd Wright, "Broadacre City," 1932

Especially living in New York, I think all of us understand why there has been a never ending debate on the merits of the city versus the country. It is embedded with arguments of logic and the more subjective (and arguably more important) lifestyle preferences. We have seen how both the logical solution of growing up shown in Le Corbusier's "Radiant City" has allowed for concentrated poverty and how Frank Lloyd Wright's "Broadacre City" has justified sprawl that has led to almost irreversible environmental consequences. And yet, as someone who is ready to move out of the city, yet bound to the employment and opportunities I have here, I am still interested in finding that balance of a country lifestyle and city opportunities. Broadacre city has this overarching communist utopia that every resident receives an acre of land. In "Town and Revolution," it speaks of deurbanists as those who want "individual homes...in unspoiled natural surroundings." I love this line...

"Therefore the city must be smashed into ten thousand pieces and scattered across the countryside, in the woods, in the meadows, so that the houses will be in the heart of nature itself."

It is hard to imagine this operating with the division of labor that we have created in our societies today. We have come so far from the subsistence living that requires a little knowledge about everything, that it may be hard to get back to that, despite being "near the sources of raw materials." And yet, I see this trend gaining momentum in places like Vermont, where the youth are looking to acquire the skills that allow for subsistence living. Are we on the back swing of the pendulum? How will the youth today raise their children, what lifestyle and where? 

INTENTIONS AND PERCEPTIONS OF THE CITY

Heather and Ivan Morison, Journée des Barricades, 2008, Various industrial and domestic items 

800 x 2100 x 1000cm, www.daniellearnaud.com

In One-Dimensional Man Herbert Marcuse argues “the technological underpinnings of modern culture both exploit and at the same time destroy personal freedom.”

The industrial revolution not only mechanized human action, objectifying the body, but also called for the calculated organization of the masses to produce more efficiently. 

In an essay published in 1963, titled The Mass Ornamentation, Kracauer looked at mass culture as it is on the surface as the essence of the historical present. Taking the Tiller Girls as an example of the mechanization of the body as a result of capitalism he argued that what appears to be progress is in fact a deformation of - or an alienation from nature. This mass mechanization was not only reflected in the mass spectacle of theater, dance, and cinema but also in architecture and the city.

Similarly, the Deurbanists perceived the city as a form of alienation and imprisonment, and praised the countryside opting to scatter “across the countryside, in the woods, on the meadows, so that the houses will be in the heart of nature”. This attitude could be explained as an outcome of the lack of compensation to the labor or output coupled with the lack of public spaces. Raymond Williams in The Country and the City explains that the changing attitudes towards the city and the rural is simply connected to the economic situation, and that in times of crisis people turn to the glorification of the rural land and the natural way of life.

According to a recent UN study published in July 2014, “54 per cent of the world’s population lives in urban areas, a proportion that is expected to increase to 66 per cent by 2050”. One might wonder what roles urban planners and architects will play with such an exponential influx of people to cities. Will the top-down planning be feasible? Will the economy be able to cater to the overambitious projects of re-designing cities or buildings that meet the demands of vanity? Perhaps by re-articulating the glorification of the countryside as a desire for a bottom-up culture, evident in the virtual worlds of blogs and social media, we can begin to understand, expand on, and experiment with the possibilities of dealing with the city as a forum and platform of cultural expressions.  

WHAT ARE OUR LIMITS?

Elemental. Quinta Monroy Housing Project. Iquique, Chile. 2003–05. Image: Cristobal Palma

In the early 1930's in the Soviet Union, the debate among architects were whether the city would still exist or would be merged with the countryside. The debate between the 'urbanists' or 'deurbanists', though, had one thing in common: they were arguing how people would behavior towards their living spaces.

The city is a complex structure that cannot be fully designed — not even by using the most complex software with as many data as possible. The essence of this difference is the multiplicity of wills and the freedom to turn it into action.

Why would one architect/urban designer/urban planner, or a small group of them, have the answer for all of urban complexity? Why try to come up with such complex urban designs if some people are still not going to be fully satisfied and might, if they have the freedom to do so, change their space? To which extend should we design or let it be done by people?

WHY OR HOW?

George Orwell's "Animal Farm", 1945

The modern understanding of mankind brought a strong concept: every man is equal. From the French Revolution onwards, the ideal of liberty, fraternity and equality permeated the development of our society. Although philosophically sound, architecturally these concepts begin a new internal revolution: since every man is equal, definitions of individuality, personalization and self-satisfaction were relegated to a place “outside our modern world”.

Technological advances were the fuel to this acceptance: from the internal combustion motors to the production line, mass production led to mass consumption, homogenizing the outcome for the sake of efficiency. In America: A Soviet Ideal, Jean-Louis Cohen touched upon the adoption of the “scientific system” as a measurement of man’s production, based on methods developed by Frederick Taylor. This same technology were the single clear means to justify a new architecture (just think about Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe and the Bauhaus manifestos of the early 20th Century). Since then, the connection was made: to be modern, efficient and progressive, we must be the same.

My point is that, following this ideology, meaning and symbolism were lost in architecture, in favor of a tendency to reinforce technocratic-mediocre assumptions. The house ceased being a home and turned into a machine, but apart from what Banham and Benjamin predicted, our contemporary society is not weighted by its function-like standards, but by the reasons we do what we do. Efficiency was replaced by Efficacy. Architecture must accompany.

WALKING UP A SKYSCRAPER

Batman walking on a skyscraper. Source:http://joseph-murrell.blogspot.com

The right to the city is not merely a right of access to what already exists, but a right to change it after our heart’s desire. We need to be sure we can live with our own creations (a problem for every planner, architect, and utopian thinker). But the right to remake ourselves by creating a qualitatively different kind of urban sociality is one of the most precious of all human rights (David Harvey, The Right to the City).

Often architects and urban planners argue about the dense design of Manhattans skyscrapers and the impact of that in people’s everyday life. People living in the center of Manhattan, live in the shadows of the skyscraper world, as they are unable to climb these giant constructions made out of steel. But how could be to experience a skyscraper through the eyes of a free runner? How could people occupy these giant facades? Architects the last decade have started to cooperate with freerunners in order to understand these different experiences that they have in the urban space. In the documentary ‘My Playground’ released on 2010, director Kaspar Astrup Schroder represents the unique relationship between the buildings and the human body.  The parkourists movement inside the city is something that architects cannot predict. They transform the city according to their will. For them the roof could function as a road, the balconies as stairs. In this documentary BIG architects speak of the idea of walking up on a skyscraper facade. How could a skyscraper like that transform the center of Manhattan? How could people occupy this façade if they were able to walk on it? 

LOBOTOMY AND SCHIZOPHRENIA

Manhattan Skyline + 425 Park Avenue Building (Foster + Partners)

Under the intention of rising the most beautiful office building in the world, The Chicago Tribune Competition was announced in June 1922. Attracted not only by the high prizes but also by the possibility to deal with such a pioneering theme as skyscrapers, the competition effervesced the architecture community attracting 263 entries from 23 countries. Such an unprecedented scope, experimentation and irony of submissions, arose from the attempt not only to process, but to criticize ongoing dogmas on vertical expansion, configuring the competition as a crucial moment during the formative years of skyscrapers.

Precisely ninety years had passed and a new competition was launched in 2012 aiming to raise a new skyscraper in Manhattan, at 425 Park Avenue. Less inclusive as allowed closed tenders only, the competition had among its finalists some of the most renowned and awarded names in contemporary architecture. Even though almost one century has passed, some of the limitations that seemed exclusive of the period marked by the paucity of knowledge on skyscrapers are still present, as issues raised in Chicago are likely to stay – sometimes deliberately – unanswered.

Going back in time once more to 1978, Rem Koolhaas – curiously one of the finalists on 425 Park Avenue – addresses in ‘The frontier in the Sky’ the dichotomy between interior and exterior of a building. Using the architectural analogy of a “lobotomy”, the possible discrepancy between facade and internal configuration is considered as a crucial point that allowed New York Makers to experience an area of unseen freedom.

Such freedom, in terms of autonomy and independence is clear. However, it is necessary to consider if freedom is by itself automatically positive. The late submission made by Claes Oldenburg for The Chicago Tribune Competition in 1962 seems quite current, as the schizophrenic phallic skyscraper paradigm seems to persist.

MICROCHIP CITY

Le Corbusier developed the concept of Ville Radieuse, inverted the logic of industry to urban planning. The centralization and redistribution can make the city more efficient. Like the fractal geometry, this logic is fully functional in different scales such as the 'House machine'. 
City is no longer a continues interface to have a tour with, what Kevin Lynch said is more proper for the old urban spaces, small scaled cites carried limited functions. Parallel to 'House machine' metropolitan is more like a 'Machine complex', the major issue of the megacities can only be considered from the level of urban planning. Transportation,  Dynamic arrangement, Zoning, all these issues totally changed. Nowadays, city revolution is more similar to the digital renovation. We can no longer think the Moore's Law is miracle, such fast reacting, precise aiming renovation is also needed in architecture area, in terms of the exploded housing needs, pollution, terrible traffic and other severe problems.

Archigram, Superstudio and all the visualizations in science fictions, people's imagine of the future city all goes to the same image, Skyscrappers like woods with metal polished surface, the city looks cold and calm, highly efficient. The only sentimental part can be seen in the Blade Runner is the wet dirty slum in the edge between cities.  

After world war II people realized that poetic can't save no one from hell. Sentimental can be protected or destroyed by industried  dehumanized forces. City society all ask for definite order. In this case, for Architects, set up a efficient circulation is more our duty.
the photo I choose is called the Microchip City which has a symbolic meaning of the accurate high efficient future city, we may think the city as a huge living machine.In the previous class, we have seen pictures and movie clips about the city grids, I think grids is just a beginning, we will finally achieve the microchip city, areas are fully autonomy just like a microchip we have input output different functions working together, if the system needs to be upgraded only replace the areas, advance it and get it plug-in again.

JACK AND THE BEAN STALK

"Theorem of the Stacked City," Life Magazine, 1909

The desire to reach the sky has been long embedded in what human hubris and ambition and canonized in myths and childhood stories. I cannot remember who said it, but there is a quote that what separates man from nature is man's ability to manipulate their environment. While I do not completely agree with that (because I believe some parts of nature can also manipulate their environment), I do believe that man has more of an intentional, and slightly obsessive need to do that. I like how Koolhaus calls skyscrapers "sheer territorial multiplication." It was something that I used to be very conflicted about because rationally, skyscrapers are the most logical way to protect the environment by reducing sprawl and concentrating the built environment on the smallest footprint. However, there is something instinctual unnatural about skyscrapers. It goes against every emotion to consider them one of the greatest protectors of the natural environment. I also see the as a solution to other forms of horizontal monotony and gross expansion, specifically slums. Part of want perpetuates the problem (distance from employment, education, etc.) is the sprawling expanse the horizontal creates. Again, however, when we look at massive high-rise, concentrated residential buildings in Hong Kong and other parts of Asia, our initial emotional reaction is that it feels unnatural and inhumane. How do we change that outlook towards something that is such a rational solution? Must we just make that mental shift? I love this old diagram because it predicts how many lives can be lived on the separate levels. 

DOES ORDER IMPOSE ARCHITECTURE?

Brasilia. Photo: Joana França

Not all of the spaces that we live in today were intentionally designed, but all of them were at some point rationalised. The grid, arguably one of the most classic instances of rational urban design strategy, may appear as a constrain to buildings within it's blocks — and it is indeed. Architecture is a discipline of constrains, either by ideals, climate, politics, economics. Urban morphology is just another one, and it is inevitable. A city could be seen as 'rational'/'gridded' or as 'natural'/'organic' as possible, in either case architecture will have to be adapted to the urban constrains around the site.

The grid does mean power. Power of a common language in such a complex structure as the city. This order can, indeed liberate the smaller actors in a city to be actively play in it. In the end what matter is not the space itself, but the possibility to actively do something about it. The matter of spaces is that it may create some patterns, but it's very rare to impede people, as Jan Gehl or Jane Jacobs would argue. People adapt themselves to different situations and may even adapt spaces to their own needs. The power of people and their adaptability to spaces cannot be ignored. The grid is not the problem.

REPRESENTATION OF THE CITY IN JACQUES TATI'S PLAYTIME

Playtime by Jacques Tati from www.dvdclassik.com/critique/play-time-tati/galerie

Rows of monumental high-rise duplicates planted in equal distances from one another in straight lines and perpendicular angles; this rectilinear gridded city in Jacques Tati’s Playtime 1967, best conveys the template of cities praised by the Congres International d’Architecture Moderne. Playtime not only critiques the homogeneity of cities and the symbolic high-rise but goes further exposing, with exaggeration, the social impact of technological reproduction, its reflection on the consumerist economy plagued by mass media.

In The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction Walter Benjamin writes both architecture and film are received “by a collectivity in a mode of distraction.”  This is evident in Playtime where people operate within the city and the buildings unconsciously, furthermore using a 70-millimeter format, he captures the whole front of the city, emphasizing the “central vacuum”  yet ­­keeping spectators distracted by activating the edges. Tati included “the dialogue within the sound,” consequently the soundtrack also keeps audiences distracted with the multilayering of sounds. This constant audiovisual distraction in Playtime introduces the spectators to stimulations we are exposed to in the city but which we ignore or consume unconsciously. This bombardment of stimulations anesthetizes the senses, as Georg Simmel wrote in The Metropolis and Mental Life, the city “stimulates nerves to their utmost reactivity until they can no longer produce any reaction at all.” In the first half of the film, architecture dominates the mise-en-scene. Tati directed the actors to walk in straight lines and right angles to give the impression that they are “trapped by the guidelines of the architects”. Modern architecture forces people to sit straight, walk straight and is intolerant of mishaps such as dropping ones umbrella.  Modern architecture not only dictates the actions of people but also erases the genius loci of the particular place; this sterile city, which is Paris, could be anywhere, “in a place that is not a place, but rather a monochrome purgatory of glass and metal, a glistening, antiseptic environment.”  Tati pokes fun at this notion with posters of Hawaii, London, Chicago in a travel agent’s office with the carbon copy of the glass and steel International Style buildings depicted. In doing so he crystalizes Benjamin’s words who expressed his concern on mechanical reproduction writing “It might be stated as a general formula that the technology of reproduction detaches the reproduced object from the sphere of tradition. By replicating the work many times over, it substitutes a mass existence for a unique existence.”

In addition, the grid, defined by Krauss as “modern art’s will to silence” and its “hostility towards literature, narrative, and discourse” is presented by Tati as an element conspiring against humanity. The city as the grid is portrayed in its naked determined materialism. Furthermore, just as the symbolists drew the window as grid transmitting light and reflection, Tati also plays on the multiple definitions of the French word glace: glass, mirror, and ice. As Hulot walks in the city his reflection as a shadow follows, and at moments tricks him into bumping into the glass doors or windows. All this glass dematerializes the physical, threading between reality and illusion, consciousness and unconsciousness. Here Tati manifests Krauss’ words “the grid’s mythic power is that is makes us able to think we are dealing with materialism while at the same time it provides us with a release into belief (or illusion or fiction)." 

THE SUBCONSCIOUS CITY: human imagination

The Bank of England, John Soane 1830

Drawn by John Soane’s skilled draughtsman, Joseph Michael Gandy, this image of the Bank of England was displayed at the Royal Academy of London in 1830. Soane shows intentionally his project as a ruin. By doing so, the human imagination suddenly gives a clear symbolic significance to his building positioning Soane’s work as among the revered ruins of Antiquity. An image that might help to understand the statement of Burton Pike: “City is, by any definition, a social image”

REPRESENTATION, MODERNISM AND DIAGRAMS

Alicja Kwade Parallelwelt, 2009

"The peculiar disadvantage under which architects labor; never working directly with the object of their thought, always working at it through some intervening medium, almost always the drawing, while painters and sculptures, who might spend some time working on preliminary sketches and maquettes, all ended up working on the thing itself."

- Robin Evans

This week my presentation topic was Representation in Modernism, and it was based in two main texts: Diana Agrest’s Representation as Articulation Between Theory and Practice (2003)  and Anthony Vidler’s Diagram of Diagrams: Architectural Abstraction and Modern Representation (2000).

Agrest starts her text by explaining how the relationship between drawing and building exceeds its pure notational function since a representation always stands in a symbolic relationship for something else.  She claims that sometimes representation becomes an end itself (detaching itself from object it is representing) and this is an indication, a symptom, of a transformation taking place in in architecture ideology. What allows for this shifting of ideology to exist is “the architect projection of the imaginary and symbolic dimensions through techniques or tools for representation and regimes of visualization”.

The initial movement towards modernism was characterized by the axonometric projection and its self-referential behavior:  by extending the view point to the infinite, the privilege of the observer of a centralized location found in the linear perspectives of the in renaissance period is suspended.  Additionally, the axonometric implies a world in space outside, reflecting the perception of "another space". In this manner, modern architecture perception of image becomes part of a different system of thought: no longer is an object related to representation (as imitation), but it becomes a mental construct - depending of mechanisms of perception, unconscious, and abstraction. 

In opposition, Agrest argues that our contemporary condition questions the dominance of the visual arts, and that networks of information and communication take place in a new “another space”. As a consequence, the current mode of representation needs to be rethought, and parameters such speed, time and movement should be included.

Vidler explains that there was a theoretical revival of the modernist diagram with a wide range of approaches, from Toyo Itos reference to Sejima's buildings (as reductions to diagrams), to more theoretical spheres such as Tshumi’s or Eisenman’s. However, he claims that the apparent contemporary avant gard of the diagram is actually a modernist revival to digital experiment.

According to him, modernist architecture was concerned to represent space and form abstractly, and its diagrams responded to the aesthetics of rationalism and functionalism. As such, the geometrically driven modernism with the use of the pure line (contour) developed a special affection for the utopian (ideological) diagram and represented in this sense a new world of space. For him, the revival of diagrams have turned them from representational to performative, where the drawing is the end object and easily translated into building. Instead of representing the abstract ideas for space of a new world, these images are about mapping and are limited by the aesthetics of our computers softwares. To summarize, from abstraction of abstractions (ideas), they became diagrams of diagrams.

The discussion we had in class raised questions such as: Are the performative diagrams something to be necessarily rejected? When they are used as part of the design process, to better analyze conditions and data gathered, they do not become the end itself as an image, but part of spacial research that can deeply contribute to the building’s designed. However, what we have witnessed in the past years is yet another misleading tendency. Instead of helping in the design process, diagrams have become sly and oversimplified, sometimes even acting as an icon, a logo, produced after the design to sell architecture to the general public.

The image I upload here is actually not related to the topic presented above. Alicja Kwade’s work occurred to me while reading about the image of the city. Cities represent themselves. Almost acting as mirrors, they embrace and confront imaginary and reality. The symbolic dimension is always there, and it is reflected in the collective sphere and in the individual self of each one that perceives them.