POLITICS OF INFINITY

No-Stop City, Archizoom Associati, 1968-1972

In the past weeks readings, I was struck by the counter intuitive idea that the presence of conflict is essential for the establishment of both true democracy and public spaces.

Pier Aureli starts his book “The Possibility of an Absolute Architecture” by claiming that architecture has been very popular in recent years. However, at the same time, architects have the increasing sense of political powerlessness with their built work. I believe this is related to the fact introduced by Deutsche that in the realm of public art, public space is highly neglected and simply taken as “real”. “To be democratic, one must acknowledge what exists”, says Deutsche, and when people accept the existence of something as naturally being real, the sense that they can change anything is taken for granted. In this scenario, authoritarian ideas are easily infiltrated in society’s believes. 

The precondition of conflict and political engagement is the acknowledgment of differences and the uncertainty about our social order, so it becomes an open question to contestation and debate. However, when did we detach ourselves from social debate and political consciousness? According to Aureli, this took place by the very idea and implementation of urbanization. 

The greek polis had politics incarnated in its existence and thus, embraced the possibility of conflict and the need for its resolution when people coexist. Differently, the roman urbs addresses only the materiality of a city: the agglomeration of houses without any initial political qualification of its inhabitants. As such, urbs describes a generic condition of cohabitation and the infrastructure needed for its function, which was aligned with the expansionist logic of the roman territory. 

The term urbanization was first introduced by Cerda in Barcelona under the paradigm of limitlessness and the complete integration of movement and communication. This condition could not take place in any kind of finite city and therefore cities were to be substituted by urbanization. The endless homogeneous grid implies the avoidance of conflict by balancing class differences through a scientific, technological and economic system.  

“The essence of urbanization is therefore the destruction of any limit, boundary, or form that is not infinite, compulsive repetition of its own reproduction and the consequent totalizing mechanism of control that guarantees this process of infinity”. And in a society where there’s no ultimate goal rather than replication - consumption - people accept their condition as naturally real. 

A good example of project that illustrates the infinity of urbanization is Archizoom’s No- Stop City. Here, the city is imagined with no spacial attribute that represents a traditional city such as landmarks or enclaves. Instead, the homogeneity of  technological integration and infrastructure overtakes any necessity for differentiation, and as a consequence, any social or  political awareness.  

Again, I see myself praising difference. However, I have never realized that one of its main contributions to the evolution of human kind is that of being a conflict generator and therefore a precondition for true democracy.