Interview with Alejandra Celedon by Daniela Puga

APRIL 2015 | MA HISTORY & CRITICAL THINKING | ARCHITECTURAL ASSOCIATION

CRITICAL COLLECTION ALEJANDRA CELEDÓN Interview by Daniela Puga

In the introduction of Jean N.L. Durand’s Precis of the Lectures on Architecture Antoine Picon argues that Durand cannot resolve the problem between social evolving needs and architecture’s total autonomy as his predecessors did by referring to nature, but through the notion of type a link could be made between the apparent opposition of socialization and autonomy of architectural production. In one of the series of Debates organized at the Architectural Association Dis – Locutions: Architecture and The Political, Alejandra Celedón presented an on-going project that related the type, which mediates between the particular, and the universal, and the collections as a finite sample of an infinite potential. This written dialogue (between Santiago and London) deepens into the possibilities of a critical action in the process of synthetizing a place by dissecting it and carefully describing the separated elements.

‘Collecting is the rudimentary way of mastering the outside

world,

manipulating.’1

of

arranging,

classifying

and

DP ‘How is architecture to meet constantly

staircases…), which ultimately became the

evolving

source (or referent) for the architectural

needs

while

retaining

its

total

autonomy?’

project. In the teaching methods at the Ecole

AC The tension identified by Antoine Picon in

des Beaux Arts this was called the archaeo:

the Introduction to Durand’s Precis, between

the review of past cases that focused

‘the

of

architecture on its own past, rather than on

points out to an

nature, the human body or the cosmos. It is

inherent contradiction within the construction of

important to note that Durand never used the

the discipline itself: architecture’s desire to be

word

a influential (and autonomous) tool with which

conceptualisation behind his plates gathering

to intervene in the city –incarnated in Beaux-

common cases already refers to Quatremere’s

socialisation

and

architectural production’,

the 2

autonomy

‘type’

as

such,

however

the

Art’s notion of ‘composition’ on

later definition. He introduces

the one hand, and the fact

into his Dictionnaire historique

that architecture had to be at

d’architecture

the service of social objectives,

category of ‘type’, which he

embodied

Durand’s

defines as ‘the idea of an

formulation of ‘utility’. The

element which ought itself to

answer

the

serve as rule for the model’.3

paradox of meeting external

‘More or less vague’, type is

needs

about the original reasons for

in

thus while

is

that

retaining

(1825)

Thus,

the

autonomy is one of the central

things.

Quatremère’s

and recursive contradictions of

conceptualisation

the discipline. This is a tension

locates

between the justification of

rather than nature or other

of

type

architectural

form,

architecture by its social utility One of Goethe's mineralogical cabinets. external reference, as its own and the simultaneous attempt Reproduced from Hamm, E. P. (2001)

model.

to turn the architectural project into a self-referential project, without mimetic

DP Does the idea of type mediate between the

reference to anything external (nature) but

particular and the universal in the same way

the tradition of the discipline itself. The work

that a collection is a finite sample of an infinite

of Durand exemplifies such search for internal

potential?

rules of development systematized at one

AC The collector gathers (and loves) his

level in his method of ‘composition’ and at

objects on the basis of their membership in a

another in his taxonomic plates. In them

series. Behind the idea of a series lies the

Durand compares ‘kinds’ of buildings, and

presence of a type, and hence of an infinite

also

play of substitutions. Mediating between the

buildings

parts

(cores

vestibules,

particular and the general is the main function

by cataloguing all the objects in it, generating

of type, that while not referring to any

an inventory, could you expand on this idea?

particular fixed case it described them all

AC Catalogues and inventories connect with

and none at once. Baudrillard reminds us that

the idea of administering and controlling the

collecting is qualitative in its essence and

infinite world. Oikonomia is the Greek word

quantitative in its practice,4 which means that

for economy, from oikos – house, and nemein

a common essence is behind a collection, but

– management. Originally the term referred

one that only materialize in a number of

to household management and it was used to

versions. Goethe reminds us:

designate ‘the typical management of a

What is the Universal [das Allgemeine]?

house, of its goods and wealth’.6 One of the

The single case [der einzelne Fall].

earliest

What is the Particular [das Besondere]?

‘Oeconomicus’ by Xenophon (c362 BC) in

Millions of cases [millionen Fälle]5

which through a dialogue between Socrates

The type cannot be limited to the general

and

idea, the abstract law or the common

(Ischomachus),

denominator of the particular cases it gathers,

methods Ischomachus used to educate his wife

but on the contrary, the type multiplies in

in housekeeping, their practices in ruling and

particular cases, and in each particular case.

training slaves, and the technologies involved

The aim of working with collections and

in farming. The text is the concern of the last

typologies is not universalization, is not to

chapter of Alex Purves’ Space and Time in

reduce the variations to the invariant to the

Ancient Greek Narrative7 where she exposes:

archetype. On the contrary, the collection –

…the ability of Xenophon’s Oeconomicus to

never finite but always open- while respects

record the place of each thing (hekastos) in

the intrinsic difference of each particular case,

infinite detail [which] offers the reader an

then displaces the gaze to a thousand new

idealised version of the oikos in its entirety.8

potential cases in which the particular and the

There, Purves argues that the farmer’s wife

general might start to coincide.

can only know her place in the house after she

works

an

on

economics

Athenian the

is

the

gentleman-farmer

author

describes

the

has learned the place and arrangement of DP The idea of collecting and classifying is an attempt of the description of the outside form inside, such as where the first attempts to collect and classify in order to understand human nature. In the seminar you mentioned briefly the management of the house [Oikonomia], that the housewife only knows her place in the house

the things within it.9 By fully cataloguing and describing each object in the house, the ‘space of its plot’ becomes apparent. Through this taxonomic operation the house becomes both ideal and typical.

The space of the oikos is catalogued and thus mapped, recording an idealised version of a larger plot that can be perfectly grasped,

producing a complete inventory of the house’s

universal ideas, translation being what allows

contents, objects and their arrangement, to the

bringing them together. That act of translation

point of becoming a written description: a

is already productive: to be part of the

collection and a list.

collection the original object literally moves to another place. While Robin Evans develops in

A record covering the entirety of the interior

his essay “From Drawing to Buildings”11 that

of the house ensures, according to Purves, ‘that

‘to translate is to convey’, to carry something,

the difference between outside and inside is a

somewhere

natural one’.10 Cataloguing and inventorying

Benjamin’s position is that it necessarily must

the

a

be altered. In ‘The Task of the Translator’ he

cartography that naturalises the limit between

argues how translation is a form in itself, 12

interior and exterior. The vast scale of the

and thus to translate is not a mechanical copy

world is reduced through a manageable

(or a reproduction) of an original from one

area. Purves noted the connection between

language into another, but to translate is an

the master of a well-managed oikos and a

operative act that produces something new -

well-managed polis. Those outsider elements

distanced from its original (a production): ‘no

considered important by Xenophon, are

translation would be possible if in its ultimate

brought inside the walled enclosure, taking the

essence it strove for likeness to the original.’13

form of household concerns, enabling the oikos

This is precisely how a collector works: moving,

to fold the extended territory into a single

carrying, transcribing and translating objects

physical space. By learning the place and

from language to others to fit certain ‘type’ of

arrangement of things, by fully cataloguing

things

objects

of

the

house

produce

‘without

altering

it’,

Walter

and inventorying each object, the world is ideally mapped, as it could be perfectly

DP In your view, do you understand the framing

grasped.

and reframing of objects as a critical action, where you have to position yourself in order to

DP What is the role of movement in a

act?

collection?

Indeed, the collector starts to coincide with the

AC Collections connects with the idea of

critic involving an editorial task: abstracting,

movement through the act of translation. The

extracting,

manipulating,

collector is able to compress time and space,

prescribing

a

translation

the

epistemological operation, collecting involves

identification of that thin line that defines

an act of dismounting things and another of

what is inside or outside a series. The

re-contextualising them into a new montage,

collection attempts to give order to particular

what forces the collector to take a stand

cases

regarding inclusion, exclusion and positioning.

being

through

what

their

facilitates

classification

under

concealed

and

eventually

discourse.

An

A collection thus implies a specific way of connecting things both to the eye and discourse: a particular way of producing knowledge in which the collector - now the critic- draws the line between what is included or excluded from a series.

NOTES 1

BAUDRILLARD, J. 2009 ‘Subjective Discourse or the

Non-Functional System of Objects’ The Object Reader.

Candlin, F., Guins, R. (Ed.) New York: Routledge.

2

DURAND, J.N.L. Op. Cit., p 36.

3 QUATREMERE

DE QUINCY, A. 1998. Type. In: HAYS,

M. (ed.) Oppositions Reader, Selected Readings from a Journal for Ideas and Criticism in Architecture 19731984. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, pp. 61720.

4

BAUDRILLARD, J, Op, Cit., p3.

5

GOETHE, W. In: DIDIHUBERMAN, G. XXXX ATLAS.

Atlas. How to Carry the World on One's Back?, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, p 95.

6

FOUCAULT, M. 1982. Space, Knowledge, and Power

(Interview with Paul Rainbow). In: HAYS, M. (ed.)

Architecture Theory since 1968. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, p 192.

7

PURVES, A. 2010. Space and Time in Ancient Greek

Narrative, Cambridge MA, Cambridge University Press, p 196.

8

Ibid., p 10.

9

Ibid., p 19.

10 11

PURVES, A. 2010, p 219.

EVANS, R. 1997. Translations from Drawings to

Buildings,

AA

Documents,

London,

Architectural

Association, p 155.

12

BENJAMIN, W. 2002. The Task of the Translator. In:

Walter Benjamin. Selected Writings. Volume 1. 19131926. Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, p 254.

13

Ibid., p 256.