Studies in Contemporary Architectural Theory_Course Diary

Studies in Contemporar y Architec tural Theor y

Ad a m Ke lly

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Studies in Contemporar y Architec tural Theor y Course Diary

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Everyday Cultures This collection of essays is a retrospective analysis of a seminar course entitled Everyday Cultures. The essays will explore the relationship between the quotidian and urban space from the beginnings of modernity to the present day.

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Adam Ke lly

Preface

Everyday Cultures was a series of seminar classes focused on the study of everyday life since the beginnings of modernity. This series of short texts is an account of the seminar course and explores a key aspect of each session in a more focused fashion. A key theoretical departure for this series of papers is the work of the Frankfurt School and their work on critical theory. It is within this context that ‘The Everyday’ first became a focus of study for those wishing to bring about a revolution in current political and economic structures. Critical theory is differentiated from traditional theory as it is intended to bring about change in society instead of simply analysing it in its current form.1 The fundamental idea of critical theory is that a broader knowledge of social relations can enable people to achieve greater political autonomy, and it is with this aim that the proponents of the school set about analysing and explaining the quotidian through the wide fields of geography, sociology, history, economics and psychology to name a few.2 Through this work critical theory aims to set out reasonable aims towards a complete social transformation, towards a new, radical democracy.

The above will act as a key theoretical undertone throughout the following series of essays. Many of the writers or events analysed herein have been informed or affected by the Frankfurt School’s ideas, from the May ’68 events in Paris to Chantal Mouffe’s theories on democracy. The following essays will attempt to draw out relevant arguments for the fields of architecture and urbanism from these discussions.

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Paul Rudolph Architects, New York

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Adam Ke lly

From Frankfurt to New Babylon Henri Lefebvre published the first volume of Critique of Everyday Life in 1946, a time when “optimism (hope and illusions) of freedom had been restored.” 1 Within this volume he outlined his intention and aims for a critical study of the quotidian which, whilst closely aligned to the thoughts of the Frankfurt School, never quite achieved equivalent widespread interest.

Nevertheless, Lefebvre’s work is an important starting point for this set of essays as his critique of the quotidian is one example that ultimately influenced urban revolts and architectural projects alike.

The Situationists movement founded their activities upon Lefebvre’s ideas of everyday life, applying his academic critique to their practical interventions in daily culture. The Situationists used drifting, a process of aimless and individualist wandering through the city of Paris as a method to compose completely unique experiences in the city. They used a process entitled psychogeography to record these drifts, purposefully avoiding the monotony and routine of modern everyday life and instead focusing on their mental states throughout each drift. At once, this was both an exploration of social experience and a protest against the alienating routines we live by, challenging the private consciousness described by Lefebvre.

For Lefebvre everyday life is “whatever remains after one has eliminated all specialised activities.”2 He describes it as a historical phenomenon, one particular to a context formed by two key ingredients. Firstly, the creation of a middle class and the decreasing power and effect of the church and monarchies.

And secondly, the concentration of the middle class in the urban realm, in which everyday life became increasingly routined and therefore easily analysed and defined. Lefebvre argues that the capitalist system seeks to make us feel individual and yet at once quashes that individuality through mechanisms such as the division of labour, stunting our development.

This alienation that we feel within the city is what he refers to as our “private consciousness.”3 Akin to the Frankfurtian critical theory approach, Lefebvre urges us to think about our metropolitan existence, proposing that it is through an understanding of the everyday that we can begin to question it and supersede our private consciousness, freeing ourselves from the moribund routines imposed by capitalist regimens. 4

The Situationists hoped to construct entire cities based on their ideas, entire cities based on reproducing situations such as those Lefebvre identified amongst the Paris Commune of 1871, which had produced a “transcendent and revolutionary consciousness”5 in which routines were no longer enforced by an all governing system. Instead, daily life could be viewed as a festival, a world of endless play. 6 Constant Nieuwenhuys took up the challenge of realising this endeavour in his work “New Babylon.” Nieuwenhuys proposed a new vision: a megastructure in which the various functions of the city that are usually fragmented and enclosed could be amalgamated into a single continual space. This could provide ever changing surroundings within the city, with each area only defined by its physical characteristics such as the ‘yellow sector’ or the ‘hanging sector’.

Through Lefebvre, the Situationists had turned the attention of the revolutionary avant-garde from p. 4

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the Marxian factory towards social reproduction as the ground for revolution through urban space, recognising that social relations are the foundation of any situation, including the relationships of production that Marx had identified as a possible revolutionary start point. Everyday life had thus become the ground for a critique of politics and culture, through a Situationist protest on daily life.7 The evident failure of the Situationists in their revolutionary endeavour is ostensibly unsurprising considering the divergent attitudes and approaches of its various proponents. The group ultimately broke up, but not before offering a valuable contribution to architectural discourse concerning the construction of a utopia. The Situationists slowly began to abandon the notion of creating a utopia, discovering that in order to revolutionise the world the avant-garde is no substitute for a large scale reallocation of power among the populace. Indeed, Kotanyi and Vaneigem, Situationists themselves, recognised that they had “invented the architecture and urbanism that cannot be realised without the revolution of everyday life.�8 In this divergence from the assertion that architecture can be the creator of utopia, the Situationists appear to have abandoned the notion that architecture can practice critical theory, a topic that will be discussed throughout the following essays.

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Spatiovore (Space Eater), part of New Babylon,

Victor E. Nieuwenhuys.

Adam Ke lly

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The Berlin Wall, as encountered by Rem Koolhaas.

A Story of the World Trade Center and The Wall

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In contrast to Lefebvre, de Certeau writes about spatial practice less critically. Whilst Lefebvre’s interest in the everyday is from a political standpoint: that it is in the everyday that the grounds for revolution can be found, de Certeau is interested in the practice of walking in the city as a poetic act that demolishes traditional understanding of space such as the bird’s eye view which de Certeau depicts from the World Trade Center. 1 De Certeau is imploring a new reading of the city, instead of understanding the city through maps, diagrams, plans, or data, can we form a deeper understanding through narratives and stories? For de Certeau this would bridge the metaphorical gap between the city viewed from atop the World Trade Center and the ‘real’ city experienced below.

retains to impact daily life in the form of an idea rather than architectural style or object (the wall in reality takes a variety of forms as fences, watch towers, pre-cast concrete slabs and other obstacles).

Whilst de Certeau identifies the individual as that which gives meaning to the city, for Koolhaas it is architecture. In both cases these authors offer a differing view of the value of the quotidian from Lefebvre. De Certeau and Koolhaas describe that the everyday (whether it is constructed by the individual or architecture) is what gives meaning to the city and call for us to be aware of it. However it is Lefebvre who takes this further, implying that this consciousness could deliver revolution.

Within these two approaches two resultant strains of architecture can be identified: that which is subservient to and further engrains contemporary political and economic powers (The Wall), and that which attempts to subvert it in a utopian way (New Babylon).

Rem Koolhaas’ text Field Trip is an example of the recording that de Certeau implores. Koolhaas’ particular walk in the city takes place in 70s Berlin, during which he discovers ‘the wall’. Koolhaas experiences the wall differently than the “clean, philosophical demarcation”2 he had expected to find.

He discovers that it is multi-varying in its forms: at times a highly designed strip of land occupied by series of fences and zones whilst elsewhere accommodating “existing urban incidents or dimensional conflicts.”3 However, by experiencing the wall, and not simply looking at a delineation on a map, Koolhaas began to discover that the wall was more than simply a border condition or object within the city. Koolhaas notes that where the wall cut through the former center of Berlin was where it was at its highest cultural relevancy: “There it was at its most confrontational, at its most consciously symbolic in its shameless imposition – on a Western enclave that bristled with pseudohypervitality – of a linear ruin infinitely more impressive than any artificial sign of life.” 4 It is important to note that for Koolhaas what was most striking about the wall, and what impacted upon him most was that its aesthetics seemed completely irrelevant. 5 It was the idea of the wall that was key, for Koolhaas not its aesthetic presentation, leading him to declare: “I would never again believe in form as the primary vessel of meaning.” 6 The wall is an example of the agency that architecture p. 7

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Covers of Wallpaper* magazine.

Adam Ke lly

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Subservient / Subversive Georg Simmel’s seminal text “The Metropolis and Mental Life,” published in 1903, examines the modern urban condition and aims to decipher how it has modified human behaviour to a state unrecognisable within a rural context. Simmel describes the modern metropolitan life as a state of constant bombardment of human stimulus. According to Simmel, to cope with this continually shifting “external milieu”1 we create for ourselves a “protective organ.” 2 This barrier relies on rational thought instead of emotive reason as our senses have become occupied by the constant flux of the city. Thus the result of the metropolitan condition is the production of the blasé individual and the only defence to our surroundings is the emotive indifference implied by such an attitude. 3

camouflage.”6 We are able to distance our inner selves from our outer representation and become actors of a fictitious identity. This is reminiscent of Lacan’s mask: a projection of a protective screen to conceal our true inner selves.7 Leach goes on to explain how the digital world is even more surreal and dream-like, creating an ever increasing detachment from our tangible surroundings. This is what Leach terms the “cocoon”, his equivalent for Simmel’s protective organ. 8 These two theories on the development of the human condition in an urban context are diverse in the conclusions of their analysis due to their contrasting temporal context. Yet, one factor which both authors agree upon is the affective relationship between the prevalent political and economic system of the era and the development of the individual within the city. For Simmel capitalism had created the blasé individual, yet for Leach advanced capitalism, and the even more opulent lifestyle it had brought with it, had created the Wallpaper* person. 9 What underlies both of these premises is that the inhabitants of the metropolis are affected by the economic systems they are living in, through the medium of the city. For Simmel the modern metropolitan existence is unmistakeably negative: a world in which the blasé individual is so emotively detached from the modes of production that one can only judge worth on the most rational, abstract of measures: money. 10 If such a premise is correct then what role does architecture have to play within this system? Is it forever limited as simply a medium for the manifestation of economic models; a stage set which is subservient to the dominance of economic processes? Or, can architecture be subversive to prevalent modes of economy, affecting the human condition in ulterior ways? With this in mind the following essays will discuss urban issues closely related to the posturing of architecture as a political tool including but not limited to gentrification, social housing, participation and the commons.

Simmel’s speculations inspired a contemporary response from Neal Leach in his 2001 paper “The Aesthetic Cocoon.” Leach follows Simmel’s premise that metropolitan life has produced a new human condition. However, Leach endeavours to discover what the blasé individual has become in the postmodern existence, almost a century after Simmel’s first proposition. Thus, Leach identifies a new modern day equivalent of the blasé individual in his description of the “Wallpaper* person.”4 For Leach, the individual of the postmodern city has become: “thoroughly aestheticized, and hence, in my own terms, anaesthetized… the pleasure seeking amnesiac of today, in constant search of gratification of the most ephemeral kind, and blinkered by its own aestheticized outlook to the social inequalities of the world outside.” 5 Unlike the blasé individual, this character does not find itself on the defensive in the modern city, rather bathing in its surrealism, embracing its absurdity and riding the wave of sensations; the Wallpaper* persons’ only defence is now fantasy. This fantasy existence means that we can hide under an “urban p.9

Adam Ke lly

Economy : City Gentrification can be defined as a process in which inhabitants, usually of lower socio-economic groups, are dislocated from their homes or neighbourhoods with little or no choice in the matter. This essay will discuss this process, and its evolution since first being recognised in the 1960s, before moving on to analyse some of the ways that progressive architects, artists and laymen have attempted to counter gentrification mechanisms.

sustaining dwellings for this increasingly marginalised social group.4 They identify that art is complicit in this process, and even being purposefully used as a tool to drive up rents and force out the poor. Such an example is the AHOP program proposed by Mayor Koch which called for purpose built artist lofts whilst those lesswell off had nowhere to live.5 This was a purposeful attempt to improve the image of the neighbourhood and capitalise on its newly found bohemian and trendy ‘atmosphere’ as a stepping stone towards full gentrification. Deutsche and Ryan successfully identify that artists in this context had become exempt from social responsibility by virtue of the artistic ideology they were subservient to:

In their paper “The Fine Art of Gentrification,” Rosalyn Deutsche and Cara Gendel Ryan outline the use of art as a gentrification tool within New York’s Lower East Side during the 1980s. 1 The authors intend to de-mystify the illusion that gentrification is a natural process and that the popularly held assumption that the upturn in interest in the Lower East Side is simply the result of a “flurry of activity” caused by “a mystical vitality.” 2 Deutsche and Ryan set about revealing a “brutal reality”: that the Lower East Side is in fact a battleground where the city administration and large scale developers are aiming to unfold a two stage plan upon the unwitting inhabitants. Firstly, the city plans to dislocate the “largely redundant working class community” by wielding their administrative powers to free up land for redevelopment. Secondly, they intend to enable large scale developers to construct the type of housing and urban environment suitable for a much more desirable socio-economic group: the professional white middle class. 3 Deutsche and Ryan describe how the impetus for this gentrification is the recent changes in the economic system under Reagan’s administration which shifted the focus for economic development from industrial to post-industrial. Reagan also tightened welfare programs, pushing millions of jobless Americans into poverty. It is thus inevitable that cities wished to rid themselves of the burden of

“The attitudes that permit this exploitation are the same as those that allow the city and its affluent residents to remain indifferent to the fate of the displaced poor: assessments of poverty as natural and gentrification as inevitable and in some ways even desirable. Armed with these attitudes and received notions of artists’ exemption from social responsibility, together with more recent cultural trends--crass commercialism and the neoexpressionist ideology whereby subjective expression obfuscates concrete social reality--the participants in the new East Village scene arrive on the Lower East Side prepared to make it over in their own image.”6 Neo-expressionism had found in the Lower East Side the space to “congratulate itself for breaking the bonds of tyranny.”7 In this impoverished neighbourhood artists believed they could declare that they had been able to liberate themselves from oppression from ‘the system’, unaware that they were functioning as a particularly effective tool within it. The first exhibition of Lower East Side art at the ICA in the University of p.10

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Pennsylvania highlighted this process: presenting a picture of a homeless alcoholic on its promotional poster, aestheticizing the poverty of the area as a work of art revealing “the special pleasures of the East Village as a spectacle for the slumming delectation of those collectors who cruise the area in limousines”. 8

Games. The group has three key methods: firstly a WikiLeaks style tip off system, enabling professionals to secretively notify the agency and the public of need large scale developments under planning. Secondly, the group is compiling a series of documents in plain English to demystify the planning and development process for the layman. Finally, the group is also beginning to propose counter proposals to large scale, profit driven housing developments. 11 The group also dovetails this work with a more anarchist approach akin to the squatter movement to challenge authority more directly and generate awareness and support for their efforts.

Interestingly it has been noted that in the USSR, large scale systematic gentrification was not to be found until after 1998 and its qualified embrace of the market system. 12 This suggests that gentrification is not a natural process to cities but perhaps an inevitable result of the economic system.

Thus we can understand art as a distressingly successful practice of gentrification. However, what of architecture, can it also be a tool for gentrification? It can be argued that architecture is usually as complicit in the gentrification process as art is in the above example. Particular architectural styles are surely as negligent of social ‘obligation’ as the neo-expressionism of the Lower East Side.9 Nevertheless there is precedent for architects attempting to challenge the gentrification process. The Community Architecture Agency is a group of approximately twenty young architects in London.10 They have collected to combat the gentrification processes underway at incredible speed in and around Stratford since the 2012 Olympic

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Untitled by Jean-Michel Basquiat, one of the most infamous neoexpressionist artists in the East Village during the 1980s.

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Adam Ke lly

The documentary film and related writings successfully detail the social, political and historical context of St. Louis since the 1940s, establishing that this evidence is popularly ignored when the demerits of the project is being discussed. The film presents an alternative view to that circulated by the mainstream and even architectural press since the project began to be demolished in 1972: that the construction and maintenance of the residences had been most negatively affected by economic and political circumstances of post-war St. Louis, not its architecture. This is counter to Charles Jencks infamous declaration that the death of modern architecture took place in “St. Louis, Missouri on July 15, 1972 at 3.32 pm (or thereabouts) when the infamous Pruitt Igoe scheme, or rather several of its slab blocks, were given the final coup de grâce by dynamite,”3 a statement has now become widely accepted as a fact. Jencks’ conclusion is proven by the film to be contextually negligent, as it systematically outlines the processes through which the project was affected by political and economic issues of the period.

During the post-war period St. Louis was undergoing a population shift, the white middle classes were taking flight to the suburbs whilst the poor black population occupied the centre of the city which was increasingly degrading into a slum. 4 Concerned by the negative effect this process was having on property values in downtown St. Louis, the city set about ‘cleaning up the slums’.5 Amongst other policies was the introduction of public housing on land in the centre of St. Louis cleared of slums. The intention of these projects was to arrest the ghettoization of the area by providing improved living conditions in a higher density.

However, the construction of the project was limited by the government’s cost per unit restriction meaning the architects were essentially obliged to construct cheap high-rise residences. Furthermore, budgetary issues ensured the properties were completed with cheap, infirm materials and fittings.6 The first issues with the project started to appear in 1958, when occupancy rates started to decrease.7 This was not a phenomena of Pruit-Igoe but of the city at large.

Suburbanisation, low-cost private housing and a slowing population trend caught the municipality off guard and the low occupancy rates of the public housing projects impacted their ability to maintain the housing blocks due to the low rent yield. 8 Nevertheless the architectural press ignored these

The Pruitt-Igoe Myth is a 2001 documentary film which aims to counter the widely-held belief that the failure of the housing project was a result of the architectural design of the buildings themselves and the demographic imbalance of its inhabitants. 1 This essay will principally be concerned with considering the former factor mentioned above as a cause for PruittIgoe’s failures: the myth that the project represents the epitome of modernist design and thus proves it’s incapacity for large-scale inhabitation in cities.

Peter Marcuse, in his essay “Housing policy and the myth of the benevolent state” succinctly sets the foundation for the counter argument to the PruittIgoe Myth: “In brief, the myth is that government acts out of a primary concern for the welfare of all its citizens, that its policies represent an effort to find solutions to recognized social problems, and that government efforts fall short of complete success only because of lack of knowledge, countervailing selfish interests, incompetence, or lack of courage.”2 p.12

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qualifications and began to argue that the architects lacked a fundamental understanding of the lifestyles of the social group that was going to live in the project. 9 Oscar Newman’s Defensible Space set about identifying the key areas of the design that he believed had led to the poor maintenance and high level of violence within the project such as the long corridors or the lack of visual connection between apartments and public spaces. 10

Smoke + Mirrors

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More recent studies have identified strong counter arguments to the proposal that it was the architecture itself that was at fault. Eugene Meehan has identified that there was a “programmed failure” in such projects due to the financial deficit faced by the St Louis Housing Authority who were more invested in clearing city centre land for lucrative private development. It can also be argued that violence and crime were a result of such destitute income levels with or without the architecture around them. Finally, the myth that the architects of the project looked to the residential tower block as some form of solution to all social problems is debunked by Yamasaki’s comment : “the low building with low density is unquestionably more satisfactory than multi-story living....If I had no economic or social limitations, I’d solve all my problems with one-story buildings.” 11 The proponents of the myth assume that the architects had a social agenda tethered to CIAM principles regarding highrise residential tower blocks. Whilst a stylistic influence is evident it is untrue that the architects believe that the high-rise structure could individually offer social reform. It was the social agenda of the municipality, to clear the slums and provide nothing more than minimum housing to its already disadvantaged inhabitants, which formed the greatest contribution to the projects failure. Pruitt-Igoe’s architectural failures have been extrapolated beyond contextual relevancy.

Reinier de Graaf, director of AMO, suggests that the demolition of Pruitt-Igoe represented a much more distressing death of solidarity, not the death of an architectural movement.12 The Pruitt-Igoe Myth unveils that if architecture cannot be wholly blamed for the failure of such a project then it follows that architecture could not have single-handedly saved Pruitt-Igoe from its failures. This essay therefore concludes by suggesting that architecture needs collaborators in order to successfully capture a benevolent nature within itself.

Pruitt Igoe, before its demise and demolition.

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Adam Ke lly

Giancarlo De Carlo (right) debating with protestors

at the 14th Triennale di Milano.

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On Participation: The Milan Conflict

Paul Davidoff author of “Democratic Planning” operates within a 1960s American urban context that was full of confrontation between those finding themselves in desperate situations and the institutions that they believed were supposed to be protecting and caring for them. The nine month long rent-strike in Pruitt-Igoe is such an example.1 Within this context Davidoff, a former lawyer turned planner, proposed a solution: advocacy planning. He proposed to confront the contemporary mode of city planning which “reflected the culture of which it is a part,” in the way it preserved the allocation of opportunity to the wealthy

and powerful. 2 For Davidoff this “present distribution of such things as wealth, income, education, and health is unequal” and “city planning has supported the maintenance of such inequalities”3 Davidoff highlights that planners are employed by the government but the assumption that said planners therefore represent the wants of the people at large is highly questionable. 4 Instead, Davidoff essentially proposes that for every centrally organised planning proposal there should also be the opportunity for alternative proposals lead by communities. Thus he p.14

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formulated a role for the advocate planner: “to oppose projects that threatened the local neighbourhood by educating the client about impending plans; to organise response through community awareness, group participation, and especially alternative schemes; and to represent the client group in front of city agencies.”5 Contemporaneous with Davidoff’s proposal of advocacy planning as a solution to the limited involvement of the public in planning decisions is Giancarlo de Carlo’s essay “Architecture’s Public” on the role of the architect and user involvement in the design process.

of creative and decisional equivalence where each— with a different specific impact—is the architect, and every architectural event—regardless of who conceives it and carries it out—is considered architecture.”9 De Carlo picks up upon contemporary struggles by students to question the architects role and seeks “a different way of doing architecture,”10 one which was concerned with democratising the design process, and thus political in nature. Socialist ideals underlie de Carlo’s writing and he criticises modernisms embrace of the challenge set for it by post war capitalism: to construct mass housing at the lowest possible cost.

For de Carlo, modernism forgot “to ask ‘why’ housing should be as cheap as possible and not, for example, rather expensive.”11 According to de Carlo, Architects had mislaid their political agency. To give proof of this point de Carlo explains how at Hoddesdon in 1951 CIAM did not invent the idea of urban renewal, they simply became complicit in a political agenda, normalising it within the architecture profession. Architecture had given cultural approval to economic or political policies, just as it had done in 1950s St. Louis at Pruitt-Igoe.

At the 14th Triennalle di Milano of 1968 a series of events played out which may have provided the inspiration for de Carlo’s essay. De Carlo curated one part of the above mentioned Triennalle, deciding to collect and present projects pertaining to architecture as a method to create alternatives to the consumerist society; promoting its political capacity.6 The exhibition contained rebellious student led projects such as a reincarnation of the barricades constructed in Paris during the same year, only this time replacing bricks with televisions and other discarded consumer objects.

Aldo van Eyck published a set of photographs of the US’s military destruction of Vietnam forests.7 However, de Carlo found himself and his exhibition subject to a sit in by students who were protesting against what they perceived to be the cultural ‘establishment’.8 De Carlo thus found himself positioned against the very groups he wished to support and the above photograph captures his attempts to win over the crowd.

De Carlo proposes the reversal of the modernist method of providing for the bare minimum requirements of the ‘average’ user, empowered by the fact that such a user does not exist.12 Instead, participative processes are required to understand the user’s needs, a process that removes the architect from his dominant position of deciding for the user. De Carlo hoped this would emancipate the user from being subjected to hierarchal decision making processes; the user can seize their own agency and inform the production of their own spaces as much as the ‘expert builder.’13

De Carlo’s 1971 essay “Architecture’s Public” is based on a lecture he gave but a few months after the above events. Thus it can be read as a response to them, in which de Carlo succinctly theorises an alternative hierarchal relationship between architecture and mass society. De Carlo intends to readjust the relationship between the designers and users of buildings: “In reality, architecture has become too important to be left to architects. A real metamorphosis is necessary to develop new characteristics in the practice of architecture and new behaviour patterns in its authors: therefore all barriers between builders and users must be abolished, so that building and using become two different parts of the same planning process. Therefore the intrinsic aggressiveness of architecture and the forced passivity of the user must dissolve in a condition

At Nuovo Villaggio Matteotti, de Carlo enacted these ideas and founded his designs on the socialist belief that everyone had the right to a spacious, well-constructed, modern home in direct defiance of the Existenzminimum concept formulated by CIAM in the 1920s. De Carlo engineered the project as a class struggle, insisting workers were liberated from management oversight during their participation in the design process. By following such an approach throughout his career de Carlo made the first steps towards re-establishing the political agency and criticality of architecture.

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Text by German artist Ingo Niermann.

The Radical C r o s s b e n c h Practitioner

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In “Deliberative Democracy or Agonistic Pluralism?”

Chantal Mouffe discusses two alternate methods towards the inception of a new, radical democracy.

Firstly, Mouffe describes and critiques the theory of deliberative democracy as advocated by Jurgen Habermas, before promoting her own path towards a more comprehensive democracy: agonistic pluralism.

Both Habermas and Mouffe are reacting to our current liberal democracy and its perceived highly institutionalised nature which results in an insufficient empowerment of the citizen.1 Democracy must be deepened.

power imbalances exist within any political context.7 Her resolution to this is not to search for universal rationality but rather to embrace conflict through treating those who oppose us as adversaries that must be convinced and converted rather than enemies that should be destroyed.8 However, Mouffe’s theory perhaps falls into the same trap as the Habermasian model, by assuming that these adversaries share “ethico-political principles,” particularly when her intentions are to bring those at the periphery of mainstream politics into the fold.9 Mouffe’s theories find architectural relevancy within contemporary discussions surrounding the political agency of architecture, a topic that has resurfaced in recent years.10 Architectural political agency is founded in the emancipatory movements of the 1960’s such as Davidoff’s advocacy planning and de Carlo’s participatory processes and has been rediscovered as a method to interact with ideas such as ecological destruction, economic inequality and anarchist protest within the realms of architecture, bringing the architect’s ethical role into question.11 Following Mouffe’s argument the participatory process is closely related to the deliberative process and thus falls into the same critique of having an unobtainable goal of rationalised consensus.

Mouffe begins by outlining the Habermasian model of deliberative democracy, identifying that essentially it involves dealing with political decisions through consensus, with the aim of reaching a rationalised decision. This would involve i) the equal participation of all citizens in discussions pertaining to issues that may affect them; ii) complete freedom to question the relevancy or legitimacy of the topics under discussion and iii) that this very deliberative process is constantly under debate and may be altered at any time if agreed upon.2 This fundamentally differs from our contemporary liberal democracy as it is a process without a prescribed voting system; citizens must deliberate until an agreement is reached via consensus.

Markus Miessen is part of a group of architect’s challenging participation upon these grounds.

Miessen critiques participation as regressive, a “nostalgic veneer of worthiness, phony solidarity, and political correctness.”12 Instead, Miessen promotes the “crossbench practitioner,” someone akin to the independent politician, who can simply utilise their “creative intellect and the will to generate change.”13 Miessen directly references Mouffe in this critique and counter proposal to current participatory processes, instead suggesting that embracing conflict can truly unleash architectures capacity to incite a radical democracy.14 Miessen thus promotes a role for the architect as mediator, probing and questioning existing processes instead of traditional participatory methods of community support and lobbying authorities for funding.15 This analysis suggests that the political agency of architecture is feasible yet cautions that it may be misconstrued or misused.

To undermine this proposition Mouffe turns to the work of linguistic philosopher Wittgenstein, particularly his theories on language games.3 Using Wittgenstein’s “forms of life” theory, which suggests that finding rational laws is impossible, Mouffe intends to project the Habermasian model as flawed.4 As Mouffe explains, Wittgenstein establishes that all discussions between individuals are contorted by a difference in understanding of words by different individuals, a process he termed ‘language games’.5 Within any context it is impossible for language to have an absolute meaning and thus the Habermasian model of reaching rational decisions precisely agreed upon by everyone involved is unreachable.

Moving on to her own proposal, Mouffe attempts to redress this issue. Mouffe suggests that she has proven that Habermas’ ideal of rationalised agreement is unattainable, and that we must instead seek a series of temporary compromises.6 Mouffe’s agonistic pluralism accepts difference and recognises that p.17

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Navarinou Park, Athens.

Adam Ke lly

The Tragedy Efficacy of the Commons p.18

Studies in Contemporar y Architec tural Theor y

In England during the 18th Century the implementation of land enclosures created a distinction between land held in ‘commons’ and private property.1 Marx argued that this enclosure was actually the beginning of capitalism; the exploitation of state powers by a privileged elite to wrestle land from communal use into private hands for their own profit.2 Therefore land enclosures has been depicted as the implementation of capitalist policies and been subject to attack from the political left.3 It has been observed by scholars that in the years since the recent economic crisis there has been an ever increasing production of enclosure.4 The commons (the return to collective working of land for universal wealth instead of private profit) has thus gained traction as not only a practical solution but also a political counter to this process.

has been corrupted (through the profiteering attitudes of the herders).7 Navarinou Park in Athens is a working example of the commons and may be analysed to understand the commoning process as a complex constant reproduction of the commons. Navarinou Park is a parking lot which was appropriated into an urban park via commoning practices.8 The space is self-managed by the local community without any municipal management authority and entirely open for public use. However, the park is presently struggling with issues such as the performance of illicit behaviours within the park such as violence and drug dealing.9 This is out with the communities intentions for the park as an open, communal space and identifies an issue with the commons: that it also produces or relies on enclosures.

Within such a context it has become important to revive the discussion around the efficacy of the commons as a process that can lead to emancipation from the capitalist system. “The Tragedy of the Commons” by Garrett Hardin is a widely disseminated essay that intends to justify the private ownership and utilisation of land on the grounds of efficiency.

Of particular fame is Hardin’s metaphorical analogy pertaining to a group of cattle herders. Hardin proposes that a set of individual herders will inevitably add to their herd to increase yield for personal gain, thus depleting the common grazing land as a resource.5 In response to this essay contemporary academics have formed their own counter arguments to dismantle Hardin’s proposition and thus reignite the commons as a legitimate radical alternative to the public / private dichotomy. David Harvey dismantles Hardin’s cattle herder metaphor by identifying his assertions as a misreading of the imagined analogy, suggesting instead that it is the private ownership of cattle and the behaviour of the farmers which would be at fault for the depletion of the grazing fields, not the practice of the commons itself.6 This identifies that it was the process of enclosure (the individual ownership of cattle) that depleted the resource instead, reversing Hardin’s theory on its head.

Harvey correctly identifies that a commons is the production of “a particular self-defined social group,”10 thus designating a space as ‘belonging’ to a particular enclosed group of people. If the goal is self-management and escaping from the policing of public space who is to decide whether a park, for example, should be used for gardening or violence? To counter this the community must, in some way, bring the ‘outsiders’ in. This ‘scale problem’ is the subject of much contemporary dialogue surrounding the commons. One proposal offered by Stavros Stavrides, himself involved in the Navarinou Park project, is to modify the commoning practice to allow for the inclusion of all potential users of the park within any decision making processes, to construct agreeable rules for its maintenance and management.11 Once more the political agency of the architect comes into question as the traditional ‘creator of the built environment’. Should the architect use his expertise to oversee the production of the commons or simply operate as one of its equal members?

Massimo De Angelis supports Harvey by asserting that if a common truly exists in the real meaning of the term, then there is a collective community behind it producing it, therefore if there is a ‘tragedy of the commons’ then it is because the commoning process p.19

Adam Ke lly

From Social Form to Urban Form and back again

Claude Lévi-Strauss is the founder of structural anthropology, the theory that there is a series of constant, enduring laws that prevail in all cultures and therefore that it is possible to make relevant comparisons between all modes of civilisation.1 In his essay “Do Dual Organisations Exist?” Lévi-Strauss intends to show how analysing ‘institutional forms’ i.e. the setting of institutions within space can reveal social structures within communities. He chooses the villages of Native American tribes to relay this point. 2 Lévi-Strauss sets about showing how the perspectives of different citizens within these situations affected their understanding of not only the social organisation of their communities but also the physical form of their villages.3 The two above images show two contrasting yet co-existent perceptions of the physical set up of the village in question, and LéviStrauss notes that it is the upper and lower groups that view things differently. 4 Whilst the privileged social group described the layout as circular with two different parts of the tribe occupying two equal halves (“diametric”), the other members of the community believed that the leaders of the village were situated in the center whilst everyone else dwelled on the edges (“concentric”).5 Lévi-Strauss goes on to draw upon further examples around the globe to give weight to his theory that social hierarchies are manifested on the physical realm.

From this analysis Lévi-Strauss identifies a correlation between particular social organisations and physical structures for the layout of villages.6 Whilst concentric structures are logically unequal (something must be in the centre whilst others must be on the edge), diametric structures retain a level of opposition but without the necessity of inequality or hierarchy. For this paper Lévi-Strauss’ theory is important as it outlines that an urban condition can be a reflection and manifestation of societal hierarchies. Therefore, one can question whether this relationship works in both directions: can social form itself be moulded by constructing urban form?

It is this line of enquiry that concerns Eve Blau in her essay entitled “From Red Superblock to Green Megastructure: Municipal Socialism as Model and Challenge.” The text centres around ‘Red Vienna’ which is the moniker for the Austrian capital during the period 1919-1934 due to the large scale implementation of social democratic policies in the p . 20

Studies in Contemporar y Architec tural Theor y

city during this time.7 The Viennese municipality had a particular focus on urban form as a potential medium through which to implement these socialist ideas successfully and thus unloaded a large amount of its intellectual and fiscal energies upon it.8 As a result, the municipality proceeded to adapt institutions and services to “prepare the working class culturally and intellectually for its historical role,”9 and their interpretation of Marx lead them to believe that the city was the context in which new society could be played out. The urban form of this endeavour was city block-scaled apartment buildings which were positioned amongst the existing residential blocks of central Vienna – symbolically presenting the importance of working class housing as a source of pride for the city.10 The interior courtyards of these ‘superblocks’ were turned public by passageways allowing access from the street, epitomising the intention for these new housing types to become social condensers.11 Instead of highly rationalised and functionalist of CIAM’s that were to follow, the internal spaces rejected this “Taylorized” mode of dwelling in favour of looser, more adaptable spaces to empower the working classes to exercise spatial agency.

To conclude, through Lévi-Strauss one can understand that physical form can be an implementation of existing social structures. Red Vienna is an example of this relationship working in reverse due to the fact that the city municipality attempted to operate against prevailing political economy (capitalism) through the creation of a new urban form: the superblock. In this manner the proponents of Red Vienna attempted to reform society through architectural and urban design.

p. 21

10 /

Plans of a Winnebago village according to informants

of the upper phratry (top). and lower phratry (bottom).

Adam Ke lly

Architecture: Reform or Revolt?

Manfredo Tafuri’s “Towards a Critique of Architectural Ideology” is a concise prospectus of architecture since the 17th Century, principally studying it within the urban context. This examination develops towards Tafuri’s attestation that modernism was in fact the actualisation of capitalism within the city, giving it urban form.1 For Tafuri modernism’s utopia of machine living was nothing more than the architectural approval and idolising of the capitalist means of production (Fordism).2 Citing the negative thought of contemporary philosopher Massimo Cacciari, Tafuri proposes that architecture’s future is one of either complete subservience or escapist isolation.3

11 /

Bruchfeldstrasse Siedlung or ‘ZigZag’ housing estate,

Frankfurt am Main, Ernst May.

Tafuri’s assertion that the city is the manifestation of a monetary economy is founded upon Simmel’s writings on the metropolis, as cited in a previous essay.4 As evidence of his point Tafuri explains that Le Corbusier’s Plan Voisin is such a translation of economic forces into urban form.5 Corbusier’s design ideas are closely associated with the assembly line process, resulting in standardisation and mass production of generic repeatable elements on an urban scale.

Thus architecture is reduced to a series of units that come together to give overall form, and the architect becomes organiser of this efficient production process rather than the producer of architectural objects. p. 22

Studies in Contemporar y Architec tural Theor y

Thus, architecture has succumbed to accepting commodification as its eternal guiding principle.6 Tafuri argues that there is no recourse to this reality, that architecture cannot become emancipated from this existence,7 and that its only reprise may be focusing inwardly towards purity and form instead of utopia. Accordingly, since the 1970s architectural autonomy has emerged as arguable the most prominent discourse within the field.9

fragments on the periphery of the city.15 Therefore, Weissenhof was the manifestation of soicety’s wants and needs incited within them by the monetary economy.

In contrast, May’s Zigzag housing estate is an attempt to recombine the alienated fragments into a whole and reconstruct society as a collective. The Zigzag estate represents the production of an urban form for the Keynesian plan of the welfare state before such a plan existed, asserting that in this case “architecture preceded political economy.”16 This project can therefore be read in a similar manner to ‘Red Vienna,’ and defined as reformist architecture.

However, as evidenced in the previous essay, there are examples of architectural projects designed to work against the grain of prevailing political economy and therefore manage to deviate from the present state of affairs. From this viewpoint the pessimism that leads to architectural autonomy seems unjustified. If we are to accept Tafuri’s assertion that architecture cannot be revolutionary in nature, single-handedly inspiring social change through its practice, it can be argued that this is not necessarily the death knell for architectural efficacy.

It is nevertheless important to note that Frankfurt was a particular context conducive to such a proposal: with a social democrat government, and strong support from the local authorities. This suggest there are a set of requirements for such a reformist architecture which has been proposed as the following: “a powerful position; a strong coalition of like-minded politicians, planners, and architects; a favourable government; and an emerging and widely disseminated idea… of an alternative to the current political economy and its societal organization.”17

Reformism is the “pragmatic, piecemeal betterment in the lives of citizens,”10 and has been proposed as an alternative to revolutionary moves which assume the complete capture of powers that can enable the construction of a new society. Tafuri lacks optimism about a revolutionary architecture, but perhaps in his work an impetus for reformist architecture can be found.11 Tafuri identifies that some post-war architectural projects were aligned with the welfare state project before such political and societal ideas had gained widespread implementation.12

If architecture is to practice critical theory, and thus challenge the widespread assertion that architecture is apolitical and inert then it is apparent it must seek out, support, and exploit the above situations wherever they may exist to practice a reformist architecture. In this there is hope for architecture to seize its political agency through collaboration and nuanced solutions to the complex problems city’s face. However, as defined in the preceding essays, the architect must use this political agency intelligently if the ultimate aim is to contribute to social transformation in the name of a new, radical democracy.

The CIAM subscribed Weissenhof Siedlung near Stuttgart and Ernst May’s Zigzag housing project in Frankfurt work as two contemporaneous examples completed under the same national government (the Weimar Republic) but with different political trajectories with regards to local authority.13 While the Weissenhof estate existed as a series of individual, suburban houses, embodying the clamour for privacy and separation from the new middle class created by capitalism, May’s housing stood as a single block within the city, a collective whole with an internal shared public space for social congregation, similar to his work in Red Vienna.14 For Tafuri, Weissenhof was proof of the alienating effect of the city (as theorised by de Certeau), which had fragmented society and therefore urban form and reproduced these separated p . 23

Adam Ke lly

Preface Raymond Geuss, The Idea Of A Critical Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 75.

2 Frank Bealey and Allan G Johnson, The Blackwell Dictionary Of Political Science (Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers, 1999).

Essay 4 Rosalyn Deutsche and Cara Gendel Ryan, “The Fine Art Of Gentrification”, October, 31 (1984), p. 91.

2 Ibid., p. 92.

3 Ibid., p. 93.

4 Ibid., p. 96.

5 Ibid., p. 101.

6 Ibid., p. 105.

7 Ibid., p. 106.

8 Ibid., p. 109.

9 Such an attitude towards architecture as a discipline detached from morality or a social responsibility were evident in Patrick Schumacher’s infamous Facebook posts in March 2014.

10 “Concrete Action - Supporting Housing Struggles In London”, Concreteaction.net, 2016 <https://www. concreteaction.net/> [accessed 19 April 2016].

11 Ibid.

12 S Tsenkova and Zorica Nedović-Budić, The Urban Mosaic Of Post-Socialist Europe (Heidelberg: Physica-Verlag, 2006) p. 195.

1

1

Essay 1 Henri Lefebvre, Critique Of Everyday Life (London: Verso, 1991), p. 10.

2 Kaplan Alice and Ross Kirstin, “Introduction To Everyday Life: Yale French Studies”, in The Everyday Life Reader, 1st edn (London; New York: Routledge, 2002), pp. 77.

3 Lefebvre, p. 150.

4 Lefebvre, p. 14-15.

5 Simon Sadler, The Situationist City (Cambridge Mass.: MIT Press, 1998), p. 105.

6 Sadler, p. 45.

7 Kaplan & Ross, p.77 8 Attila Kotanyi and Raoul Vaneigem, “Programme Elementaire Du Bureau De L’urbanisme Unitaire”, Internationale situationniste, 1961, 16-19.

1

Essay 5 The Pruitt-Igoe Myth (Chad Freidrichs, 2011).

2 Peter Marcus, “Housing Policy And The Myth Of The Benevolent State”, in Affordable Housing Reader, 1st edn (Oxon: Routledge, 2013), p. 36.

3 Charles Jencks, The New Paradigm In Architecture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), p. 9.

4 Katharine G. Bristol, “The Pruitt-Igoe Myth”, Journal of Architectural Education, 44 (1991), p. 164.

5 Ibid.

6 Ibid.

7 Roger Montgomery and Kate Bristol, Pruitt-Igoe (Chicago, Ill.: Council of Planning Librarians, 1987), pp. 235-239.

Ibid.

8 Bristol, p. 167.

9 Ibid.

10 Ibid., p. 169.

11 Reinier de Graaf, The Huffington Post, 2015 <http:// 12 www.huffingtonpost.com/reinier-de-graaf/after-pruittigoe_b_8220592.html> [accessed 19 April 2016].

1

Essay 2 Michel de Certeau and Steven Rendall, The Practice Of Everyday Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), p. 157.

2 Rem Koolhaas and others, Small, Medium, Large, ExtraLarge (New York, N.Y.: Monacelli Press, 1998), p. 219.

3 Ibid. p. 221.

4 Ibid.

5 Ibid.

6 Ibid., p. 227.

1

Essay 3 Georg Simmel, “The Metropolis And Mental Life”, in Rethinking Architecture: A Reader in Cultural Theory, 1st edn (London; New York: Routledge, 2002), p. 70.

2 Ibid.

3 Ibid., p. 73.

4 Neil Leach, “The Aesthetic Cocoon”, OASE, 54 (2001), p.

106.

5 Ibid.

6 Ibid., p. 112.

7 Steven Z Levine, Lacan Reframed (London: I.B. Tauris, 2008), p. 75.

8 Leach, p. 108.

9 Ibid., p. 107.

10 Simmel, p. 73.

1

Essay 6 Bristol, p. 166.

1 Paul Davidoff, “Democratic Planning”, in Architecture 2 Culture 1943-1968, 1st edn (New York: Rizzoli, 1993), p. 443.

Ibid.

Ibid., p. 444.

3 Ibid., p. 442.

4 Andreas Mueller, “The Fundamental Protagonist”, Field, 2 p. 24

Studies in Contemporar y Architec tural Theor y

References 5 6 7

8 9 10 11

1

2

3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

11

12

13 14

15

1

2

3 4 5

6

(2008), p. 76.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Giancarlo de Carlo, “Architecture’S Public”, in Architecture and Participation, 1st edn (London; New York: Taylor & Francis, 2007), p. 13.

Ibid., p. 4.

Ibid., p. 9.

Mueller, p. 77.

Ibid., p. 78.

Massimo De Angelis, “The Production Of Commons And The “Explosion” Of The Middle Class”, Antipode, 42 (2010), p. 955.

8 www.e-flux.com.

9 Ibid.

10 Harvey, p. 73.

11 www.e-flux.com 7

Essay 9 Claude Lévi-Strauss, Claire Jacobson and Brooke Grundfest Schoepf, Structural Anthropology (New York: Basic Books, 1963).

2 Ibid., p. 133.

3 Ibid.

4 Ibid.

5 Ibid., p. 134-135.

6 Ibid., p. 139.

7 Eve Blau, “From Red Superblock To Green Megastructure: Municipal Socialism As Model And Challenge”, in Architecture and the Welfare State, 1st edn (Oxon; New York: Routledge, 2015), p. 27.

8 Ibid.

9 Ibid., p. 29.

10 Ibid., p. 30.

11 Ibid., p. 33.

12 Ibid.

1

Essay 7 Ilan Kapoor, “Deliberative Democracy Or Agonistic Pluralism? The Relevance Of The Habermas-Mouffe Debate For Third World Politics”, Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, 27 (2002), p. 459.

Chantal Mouffe, “Deliberative Democracy Or Agonistic Pluralism?”, Social Research, 66 (1999), p. 747.

Ibid., p. 749.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid., p. 752.

Ibid., p. 753.

Ibid., p. 755.

Ibid.

Maroš Krivý and Tahl Kaminer, “Introduction: The Participatory Turn In Urbanism”, Footprint, 7 (2013), p. 1.

Suzanne Harris-Brandts, “The Humanitarian Architect: Notes On Ethical Engagements”, in The Expanding Periphery and the Migrating Center (Toronto, 2015), p. 153.

Nina Valerie Kolowratnik and Markus Miessen, Waking Up From The Nightmare Of Participation ([Utrecht]: Expodium, 2011), p. 38.

Ibid.

Markus Miessen, Chantal Mouffe and Nikolaus Hirsch, The Space Of Agonism (Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2012), p. 23.

Kolowratnik and Miessen, p. 38.

Essay 10 Manfredo Tafuri, “Towards A Critique Of Architectural Ideology”, in Architecture theory since 1968, 1st edn (Cambridge, Mass: MIT, 2000), p. 2.

2 Ibid., p. 25.

3 Ibid., p. 2.

4 Ibid.

5 Ibid., p. 26.

6 Ibid., p. 15.

7 Ibid., p. 33.

8 Ibid., p. 4.

9 Tahl Kaminer, “In The Search Of Efficacy”, in Is There (Anti-)Neoliberal Architecture?, 1st edn (Berlin: Jovis, 2013), p. 46.

10 Ibid., p. 56.

11 Ibid.

12 Manfredo Tafuri, Architecture And Utopia (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1976), p. 50.

13 Kaminer, p. 58.

14 Ibid., p. 58-59.

15 Ibid.

16 Ibid., p. 60.

17 Ibid.

1

Essay 8 “On The Commons: A Public Interview With Massimo De Angelis And Stavros Stavrides | E-Flux”, E-flux.com, 2016 <http://www.e-flux.com/journal/on-the-commons-apublic-interview-with-massimo-de-angelis-and-stavrosstavrides/> [accessed 19 April 2016].

Karl Marx and others, Capital (London: S. Sonnenschein, Lowrey & Co., 1887), p. 512.

David Harvey, Rebel Cities (New York: Verso, 2012), p. 68.

Ibid., p. 69.

Garrett Hardin, “The Tragedy Of The Commons”, Science, 162 (1968), p. 1244.

Harvey, p. 68. p. 25

Adam Ke lly

p . 26

Studies in Contemporar y Architec tural Theor y

Image Citations 1 https://www.flickr.com/photos/73172555@N00/1232674795 2 https://41.media.tumblr.com/66193549be677bb052043a4d61336da4/tumblr_mzqvr4Xip91r6bkl6o4_1280.jpg 3 http://www.oocities.org/andres_passaro/Berlin_Rem_Koolhaas/ImagesBK/bk17.JPG 4 http://www.wallpaper.com/gallery/art/15-years-of-wallpaper-the-covers 5 https://d1lfxha3ugu3d4.cloudfront.net/exhibitions/images/2015_Basquiat_EL135.37_4000W.jpg 6 http://www.pruitt-igoe.com/YAMA/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/woman-and-children.jpg 7 Andreas Mueller, “The Fundamental Protagonist”, Field, 2 (2008), p. 76.

8 Nina Valerie Kolowratnik and Markus Miessen, Waking Up From The Nightmare Of Participation ([Utrecht]: Expodium, 2011).

9 https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Pf8Dr19ryJw/TZO2fXov0OI/AAAAAAAAG_s/dyglO7b2IHU/s1600/

exarchia+occupied+self+organized+park+Navarinou.jpg 10 Claude Lévi-Strauss, Claire Jacobson and Brooke Grundfest Schoepf, Structural Anthropology (New York: Basic Books, 1963), p.

134-135.

11 http://functionmag.tumblr.com/post/45664884264/bruchfeldstrasse-siedlung-frankfurt-am-main

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