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.