A Manifesto By Mitchell Ransome
ARCHITECTURE IS DEAD
INFINTE URBAN
In this manifesto I propose to discuss how architecture has been monopolised and conformed in the modern age. It isn’t new that architecture has only been for the elite, those who could afford it. The problem here lies with the lack of discourse that is being explored through the architecture being produced, it is being replaced with the developments, the suburbs and the boutique homes; these structures that are almost repeated in themselves over and over with out any experimentation of the human condition at all. This I define as the Urban. A need for real architecture, an architecture with substance and heavy theoretical discourse solidifying itself, is the solution. This I would call Art/Architecture. Architecture has lost its wholeness, it has become a fragmented version of what it once was, it has become mass produced. It is now a commodity you buy off the shelf, a product of the age of ‘planned obsoleteness’(Peretti, 2014). Architecture is dead.
Piranesi, Scenographia Campa Martii, 1762.
As google defines a commodity as a ‘product that can be bought or sold’ (Google 2015), the discourse of architecture has been worn down to the essence of an object and has lost all monumentality of itself. Popular Marxist architect Pier Vittorrio Aureli (Aureli 2011) describes analyses Piranesi’s etchings of Rome from the 18th century, and his fascination with the antiquity of Ancient Rome compared to modern day Rome of the time. Piranesi etched in his ‘ Scenographia Campa Martii’, 1762 etching shows existing ruins of Ancient Rome and the Tiber river but devoid of Modern Rome, the urban, through this we can gather the overpowering nature of the urban fabric of the city as these ruins of Ancient Rome in their worn state seem to have barely survived. Moreover in Piranesi’s ‘Iconographia Campi Martii’, 1762, when compared to Giovanni Battista Nolli’s ‘Nuova Pianta Di Roma’, 1748, shows the untainted freedom of the potential of Rome without the urban, an archipelago of monuments, Nolli however portrays the overpowering nature of the urban upon the architecture; almost a precursor to the situation today. This rise of the Urban has led architecture to exaggerate itself, to free itself from the sea of the mundane and thoughtless. This can be seen in Mies’ overuse of the plinth to further separate his buildings from the archipelago urban fabric as Aureli points out in the Seagram Building, 1958, or the Toronto-Dominon Centre, 1963. Discourse from Rem Koolhaas in his book Cities of the Captive Globe, 1972, further support this idea of architecture as monument but also architecture as Art/Architecture, featuring his favourite architectural theories; raised up on plinths creating an archipelago of discourse similar to that of Piranesi.
Piranesi, Iconographia Campi Martii, 1762.
Giovanni Battista Nolli’s ‘Nuova Pianta Di Roma’, 1748
Toronto-Dominon Centre, Mies Van der Rohe, 1968
Seagram Building, Mies Van der Rohe, 1968
The machine of the Capitalist ideology has been a theme repeatedly brought up in the discourse of society, as popular Marxist theorist Slavoj Zizek describes in the film ‘A Perverts Guide to Ideology’,(Fiennes 2012). In the first scene he critiques the film ‘They Live’,1988, as a masterpiece of modern day commentary on ideology where the protagonist John Nada (Nothing); finds a pair of sunglasses that have the power to reveal the capitalist agenda behind the advertisements around him. This in turn Zizek describes as ‘we live so we are told in society’ (Fiennes 2012), a billboard advertising a new computer system is viewed in the film and when Nada puts his glasses on to view it a second time the billboard just screams ‘OBEY’; not to dissimilar to that of the development companies that have taken over the housing market. When listening to the radio an ad played from Carson Property (2015), a developer from Australia stating ‘You could own your own Carson Home’, resonates with what Zizek described, furthermore Zizek states using using Marx’s definition of a commodity as ‘not a simple object we consume, … [but] full of theological and metaphysical niceness’ (Fiennes 2012) this reinforces the idea of the Carson Homes’ and many other developers who just want to churn out the product home.
Movie Poster, A Perverts Guide to Ideology. 2012
Metricon Property Billboard.
A Perverts Guide to Ideology, Thats Life, screen grab
Consume 1.2, Mitchell Ransome
Rem Koolhaas Stroy of the Pool, 1977
The machine of the mass produced world is radically realised in the film Metropolis (1927) by Fritz Lang as the extreme centralised capitalist dystopia or utopia depending on where you fall on the social hierarchy. The idea of the working machine, where the dependence of the functionality of the city falls on the lowest caste of society the manual workers, where the capital that they earn from working the machines is barely enough to sustain them. But they long for the city up top with views from under the drains able to see the magnificence of industrialisation and the mind of Joh. Looking at the movie abstractly and relating to the mind of a developer giant, is not Joh the developing giant who has capitalised on the willingly manipulated who can afford to live up top, essentially creating an endless Urban? Moreover is not New York a raw, real representation of this expanse of Urban of the discourse-less architecture; through Koolhaas’ ‘The Story of the Pool’, (Koolhaas 1977) a similar phenomenon was discovered by the Constructivists of coming from Communist Russia and rowing their pool to America the Capitalist land of freedom where they could practice as they wished. The Constructivists found that when they reached the shores of Manhattan that nothing was in fact different what they intended to avoid was undone when they docked on Wall Street, ‘shocked with the uniformity of (dress, behaviour) of their visitors … this crudeness, lack of individuality’ (Koolhaas Delirious New York p. 308), more than architecture had become a an apparent commodity
Fritz Lang, Metropolis, 1927. screen grab
New York buildings, Essential Moments Photography, 2010.
Fritz Lang, Metropolis, 1927. screen grab
Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto (1848), can be adapted to the ideology of Architecture as commodity in the modern world; with the rise of technology and the wage gap widening leaving the wealthy elite and the plebeian. We live in a world where it now costs more to build an imperfect wall than a perfect one, the rise of computer driven pre-fabrication, generative designs, and endless multi-residential developments; Marx’s statement ‘the more modern industry becomes developed, the more labour of men [is] superseded’ (Communist Manifesto 1848 p.42), in regards to this argument architectural discourse and Art/Architecture are being lost to the Urban. The loss of architecture and the uncontrollable rise of the urban fabric is a concept explored through Archizoom and their ‘No-Stop City’, 1968-72 (Stauffer 2002). The No-Stop City is the end game of the Capitalist modernity, it shows the industrialised city mass produced and never ending, there is no centre to the city and no identity; the urban goes till infinity. No-Stop City took the idea of complete capitalist control of society to the extreme, with equality for all buying into the idea and leading to conformity. Hilberseimer also investigated the totalizing quality of urbanisation in his Hochhausstadt, 1924 (Aureli 2011); the planned urban city portrays one dominate architectural form which rules over all others, the starkness of the buildings do not denote any idea of the function of the structure but they house all, furthering the understanding of equality through mass production. The individual is destitute in the drawing of endless repetition and as Aureli states the ‘city is reduced to its reproductive conditions’ (p.14), the capitalist dichotomy of architecture has become belittled to just a building; like walking down an isle in the supermarket and the endless shelves of buildings are at either side.
Hilberseimer, Hochhausstadt, 1924 . Aureli 2011
Archizoom, No-Stop City, 1969-72. Aureli 2011
Hilberseimer 1944 The New City p.54
‘The whole nation must be considered as one economic unit in which each section fulfils its respective function in relation to the whole.’
The illusion of freedom is what allows our capitalist society to function, this desire to continue to work in order to better ones self. We the people are at the whim of the private enterprise that sell this idea of freedom to us and we buy into it. As with Marx (1848), would define what separates a human from an animal is our desire to create a product in order to satisfy a need, if looking at this simply one an early human hunter would sharpen a stick and create a spear; the result would then allow him to hunt more efficiently. This then in turn has created more needs once the first need for food is satisfied, food has become more available to the hunter and so his need for food is increased as his quality of life is increased and so is his tribes population. This increase has more needs, which need to be satisfied. This way of satisfaction for the need and the immediate thirst for more is human nature; and it has only continued to grow over time. Understanding this our only directive in life seems is to clench these thirsts for more and more; we are ruthless in our need to consume. And consume we must in order to survive! The vicious circle of exchange. Advertisements flaunt themselves in the eyes of the public, teasing, wishing, guiding us to a better future a more efficient future if we buy into the product. The new must have is now then owned by not just the individual who could afford it but almost everyone else who could as well, leaving a society of clones, feasting on the spoils of mass production.
Fritz Lang, Metropolis, 1927. screen grab
Consume 1.2, Mitchell Ransome
Consume 1.2, the city designed for the Capitalist dystopia, focuses on this continuing rise of capitalist powers, uncontrollable consumption by the willing people who unknowingly follow in the desire to make their lives easier if they claim the next available product. The Network of cities designed for consume 1.2 are based off of Hilberseimer’s (1944) analysis of the planning of cities over time. A simple grid dictates a strong sense of control and modularity over the information cities, each controlled by a corporate enterprise which the people of that neighborhood work for. The network is set up to ensure that if one city is down through public unrest, war or another sort of crisis; the remaining are not affected, moving away from the traditional ideology that the city is a stronghold and now to a dispersed archipelago stronghold. This networked city system also allows for complete corporate take over of the city and it’s workers if need be. The wage gap has now risen so much that the there is no middle class only the elite few who now rule through heir powerful production enterprises; and the lower caste of society is left to work in their name, producing and consuming for them. Unbeknown to them that they are actually being controlled and coerced into devouring the resultant product. In the cities manual labour is no more thing, taking Henry Ford’s refined production line motif; where people love to work less and get paid more.
Farming and industrial robots have taken all the of these positions leaving the human to almost become extinct if it weren’t cheaper and more efficient to use a human mind as a proxy to power the super marketing computers and the main frame of the machine’s network interface. Where the unconscious mind of the proliferate is then flooded with sponsored advertisements in their dream like state, convincing them to buy and consume and repeat! This cycle of unsustainable production has now come back with a vengeance through complete control of the target audience. The worker is the lab rat, the worker unknowingly has no rights. This information currency has taken off with out anything able to stop it. It provides less work and more money to then spend on more goods. The neighbourhoods where everyone lives in the same building, in the same controlled grid, because they were convinced to purchase this; focuses around the central worker building the city’s own information enterprise. This harks back to when monarchies ruled and the central power and mysticism controlled; furthermore it acts as a camouflaged panopticon able to further this unknowing control. Around the central ruling enterprise there is the central gardens where the people are able to enjoy their daily lives and leisure, around the museums of culture, the Cecilio Matarazzo Biennial, the Museum of Old and New Art, Volkingen Ironworks and the R. Solomon Guggneheim. Each symbols given to the people as an act of charity and good public relations to smother the mind harvesting. They are symbols of the death of democracy, free will, industry and the spirit, respectively.
Consume 1.2, Mitchell Ransom
me
Furthermore this capitalist venture that we live in, the perception of the customer is always right, it has created this false positive. In terms of architecture this has dramatically limited the terms of revolutionary thinking about space and architecture because of the client’s tainted thoughts about how their building should be represented. Koolhaas describes the process of explaining every part of the building with the client very limiting (Heidingsfelder 2008) because they are unable to envision the completed project which is difficult because you need to wrestle for your vision for the project, where as with competition entries his idea can be fully realised. He in turn developed the partner firm AMO (1999) with the ideology of removing the client from the picture to allow full autonomy over the architectural discourse that is being experimented on. The conglomeration of architects, writers, critics and researchers that exist with in the firm then have free reign to realise a ‘pure architecture’ (Sigler 2000) emancipating architecture from the foundations of the real world. Architecture then can not become as profound as scrolling through an Instagram feed and giving it a like, instead of a discussion on discourse through the experimentation of how it will be used. Through obeying the capitalist paradigm we have been forced to weather mundane conformity. A sense of responsibility should hold architects to their convictions, not a single more structure will be designed with out experimentation and analysis of the human condition with in the space. Innovation is motivation.
Rem Koolhaas, City of the Captiv 1977. Aureli, 2011.
ve Globe,
References Aureli, Pier Vittorrio. 2011. ‘The possibility of an Absolute Architecture’, The MIT Press, England, 2011. A Pervert’s Guide to Ideology. Directed by Sophie Fiennes. UK, Zeitgeist Films. Consume 1.2, is my own test of the theory for a commodity driven architeture. Consumers vs the Makers. Directed by Tedx. Brighton, England. 2014. Google. 2015. Commodity Definition. Last Modified 11/11/15. https://www. google.com.au/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF8#q=commodity%20definition Hilberseimer, Ledwig. 1944. ‘The New City’, Principles of Planning. Paul Theobald, Chicago, 1944. Koolhaas, Rem. 1978. Delirious New York. The Monacelli Press, New York, 1978. Metropolis. Directed by Fritz Lang. Germany, Paramount Pictures. 1927. Marx, Karl and Engels, Friedrich. 1848. The Communist Manifesto. England. Osbourne, Peter. 2005. How to Read Marx. Granta Books, London. 2005. Rem Koolhaas, 2000. Jennifer Sigler, Index Magazine, last modified 11/11/15. http://www.indexmagazine.com/interviews/rem_koolhaas.shtml Rem Koolhaas: A Kind of Architect. Directed by Markus Heidingsfelder and Min Tesch. Germany, Independant. 2008. Stauffer, Marie Theres. 2002. Utopian Reflections, Reflected Utopias: Urban Designs by Archizoom and Superstdio. AA Files, No. 47, 2002. pp. 23-36
Image References Cover photo, Martin Hunter, Getty Images, 2012. http://www.zimbio.com/pictures/Z_pXvaa25A_/ Earthquake+Damaged+Building+Blown+Up+Controlled/ TdUk7777tEd Essence of Photography, 2010. http://inessentialstuff.deviantart. com/art/New-York-City-Buildings-179553497 Seagram Building, http://blog.okmylo.com/favorite-things/madsfrederiks-favorite-thing/ Toronto-Dominon Centre, Scott Norsworthy, 2008. https://www. flickr.com/photos/scottnorsworthy/2302506686. All other photos have either been previously referenced or they are my own sourse.