Political systems & Utopian urbanities

Political systems & utopian urbanities In what ways urban strategies reflect the political context they were born into?

The examples of satellite-cities generated during Russian constructivism (1925-1932) & the city of the Captive Globe by Rem Koolhaas (1974)

Irene Sfakiotaki | November 2015 Technical University of Eindhoven

Political systems and utopian urbanities.

In what ways urban strategies reflect the political context they were born into?

The examples of satellite-cities generated during Russian constructivism (1925-1932) and the city of the Captive Globe by Rem Koolhaas (1974).

Sfakiotaki Eirini, Graduate student of Architecture & BPS, Department of Architecture, Building & Planning Technical University of Eindhoven E-mail, university: e.sfakiotaki@student.tue.nl E-mail, personal: eirini.sfakiotaki@gmail.com

ABSTRACT

Cities are always mutating in various circumstances, sometimes according to urban planning, others simply forced by contemporary needs. The social, the economic and the anthropogenic context have a continuous influence on the urban footprint of the city. The political system often determines the margins in which cities are developed, but sometimes the connection between politics and the formed urbanity of the city is less tangible.

In this essay, an effort to investigate if and how unrealized urban plans, designed by architects, are- or not, in a dynamic relation with the political context in which they were born into, will be made. The examples used, will be drawings of satellite-cities generated during Russian constructivism (1925-1932) and the city of the Captive Globe by Rem Koolhaas (1974). It is deliberately chosen to use unrealized cities in order to investigate this affiliation, under the aspect that utopian cities are products of ideology and not of reality.

The general social and political context, as well as the basic city-plan, and the representative unite of the city, will be presented per case study. An effort to analyze and compare the constructions generated into two different political systems, their urban context, as well as the morphology of the generated cities, will be the objectives of this essay.

Key- words: Urbanism & Politics, Constructivism, Rem Koolhaas, Manhattan

Note: The word “production� is used under dual meaning in this essay. Sometimes indicates the production as a result of a creative, artistic process; while others indicates the result of the industrial process. The meaning is becoming clear according to the surrounding context.

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00. Introduction _THE STORY OF THE POOL BY REM KOOLHAS

Figure 1: Arrival of the floating pool

Despite the fact Koolhaas was born in late decades of modernism, he uses in his work conceptual allegations inspired from De Stijl artistic movement, modernism and Russian constructivism.

His personality is linked to deconstruction movement, theory of division, chaos and individualism. Because of that, it might be beyond tangible connections to detect, further more to identify, constructivist sperms in his theory. Koolhaas himself, narrates a short story which suggests this connection, - but does not deconstruct the affiliation-, between the two.

Koolhaas’s allegory, "the Story of the Pool" starts in Moscow of 1923, when students of architecture design a floating pool. This metallic construction would be used for both physical exercise and socialization of its users. It would also have the capacity of transferring its users across the ocean if they synchronize their swimming towards the opposite direction of their destination (action-reaction).

When after 1932, constructivism started to decline and in the end was stifled by the Stalinist regime, the architects decided to escape from the Soviet Union and head to America, using the pool.

After traveling forty years, Soviet architects arrived in Manhattan and discover with horror that there, they were going to meet the same roughness, the same lack of individuality and the same indifference they thought they had left behind.

"Did communism reach America while they were crossing the Atlantic?" (Rem Koolhaas, Delirious New York, p. 308) Once more, they were treated with disgust, as the ideas of modern movement they represented, were already outdated.

The whole story is Koolhaas's comment on individualism and collectivism. The synchronized effort of the architects get them to achieve their goal. The story has multiple interpretations: It seems that a modern construction created in Moscow, found its final destination in the isolation of Manhattan forty years later, where supposedly, the ideological and morphological context were already gone.

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Is this a manifest on the ideological and morphological uniformity of constructivism and postmodern movement? Or an expected mutation? May a virtual city designed during a communist regime (to address habitation crisis) to have influenced the design of a virtual city comment on the viability of chaotic metropolitan areas?

01. CONSTRUCTIVISM & COMMUNISM a. Social & political interaction: the first attempts Development of new movements always comes to mark social changes sealed by political events. They aim at expressing new needs or fulfilling old ones, in a new way. In the same context, development of constructivism in Russia of 1917, inevitably was accompanied by the political content of revolution and the visions for a new society. Constructivism associated its name with a vison for “new” architecture (for a “new” lifestyle, in general) which in one way or another, had to express in tangible and sustainable terms the change and progress of new world’s order.

Born via collision events, constructivism, was destined to express contradictions. However, its origins in relation to what was finalized as the manifesto of constructivism in the end, do not converge neither in theoretical nor in synthetic level. Thus, the architecture of the first postrevolutionary years presences its felt, inspired by the belief that the revolution needs the art and the art revolution, while seeking for morphological status (History of Soviet Architecture, 1917 – 1925, Chapter. ΙΙΙ,).

In early works, the effort to overcome expressions and ideas of capitalistic world, resulted in “new” architectural language which completely eliminated the functional purpose of the construction. The purpose of architecture to offer solutions to existing problems was undermined, resulting in designing “habitable” sculptures.

Example of this period is Tatline’s tower, “working palace” pavilion in Paris exhibition.

Figure 2: Tatline’s tower

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b. Social & political context: constructivism (1925-1932)

Constructivism, as a movement did not expressed developments in architecture alone, but also in visual and plastic arts, poetry, theater and graphic arts. With main representatives the theorists R.I.A Higer and Alexei Gan, the manifesto of constructivism was issued in 1911: "Constructivism as trend in artistic production and as expression method, appeared, developed and evolved in society and industry, within the framework of dialectical materialism1. The methodology is inseparable by the proletarian revolution and the context of the socialist Soviet regime. ". (Antole Kopp, Town and revolution, Chapter 5.6)

However, in architecture the main representatives were O.C.A and A.S.N.O.V.A. "Since man is a reflection of the conditions of his life, the architects would attempt to alter human nature by using the influence the new life context will have, which must be consistent with the image of a society which seeks to be build”.

(Antole Kopp, Town and revolution, Chapter 5.3).

The first conference of the Union of Architects (O.C.A) clarifies the point above in connection to industrialized construction and operation capabilities, but never considers that point more important than the essentially social problems. This text clearly shows that constructivism before the 20s (the Malevitch, Gabo, Persher) has very little to do with the years '25 to '30.

"Later, of course, after '32. constructivists would be blamed, due to political conspiracies, of neglecting the peculiar conditions of the Soviet regime, and particularly the new lifestyle that was its basic priority”.. (Antole Kopp, Town and revolution, Chapter 5.6) The innovative element in constructivists’ was that the social role of architecture. While O.C.A was declaring support to West architects, they severely criticized their intentions and social orientation. For them, there was a fundamental difference between the Western lifestyle and social relations elaborated in the capitalist society, and the lifestyle they were willing to represent in the country where the proletariat was trying to build up socialism.

The orientation of modern architects was the re-organization of private and social life throughout re-designing spaces for existing activities (labor clubs, new housing typology, human-oriented industrial environments, new cities plans “different from the capitalist standards”). However, they were conducting a morphological research, although socially and politically oriented, in a period where the need for building infrastructure of every type was raising and the massive construction, standardization, prefabrication and industrialization of construction were mandatory prerequisites.

Therefore, constructivists were aiming to respond to the raising needs of the time, in a context where the object of government policy was the transformation of society without additional obstacles by private interests. However, the demands of life itself, the abrupt transformation, the underdeveloped economy and political choice factors set restrictions on realization of those projects.

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Dialectical materialism (sometimes abbreviated diamat) is a philosophical doctrine regarding science and nature.

The main idea of dialectical materialism lies in the concept of the evolution of the natural world as the emergence of new qualities of being at new stages of evolution. . Main founders are considered to be Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, while significant contributions were also attribute to V.I.Lenin, Gkreorgk Lukacs and others. Dialectical materialism was used by Marxist thinkers and was a major theoretical and philosophical tool for most parties referred to socialism and communism, mainly (but not exclusively) due to the perception that history, as a process, evolves through out of the class struggle. (Antole Kopp, Town and revolution, Chapter 5.6)

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c. City_ urban plan

The city- as a whole of all those buildings which would contribute to social change-, had to become placenta of abolition of private property and old land- use legislation. Therefore, urban planning became number one priority in the agenda of financial planning organizations.

The main objectives were: homogeneity, the end of discrimination, "clean urban blocks" and social housing, the reorganization between center, residency and industrial zone, the regeneration of rural underdeveloped regions. The challenge was to produce ideas and plans on the establishment of a socialist city made up for residents-workers with the same rights and obligations, sharing collective facilities which would replace many of the family functions.

The way to implement the "socialist city" was approached under two different perspectives: On one hand, there is the approach of those architects called “urbanists”. They face city as an enlargement of a collective unit which can include all activities of daily life. The city in their perception is the repetition of a complex which defines minimum individual surface for dwellings, while activates previously embedded in individual housing such as daily living spaces and wet zones, are now placed in the collective sphere of activities. In that way, boundaries between private and public space, between residency and neighborhood are redefined, even abolished. These types of cities could be rural or industrial, depending on the type of employment of residents.

The rival opponent, the “deconstruction urbanists” supports substantially the abolition of the character of city and countryside, by locating industrial zones throughout the country, near the sources of raw materials. They are in favor of redeveloping residential complexes (which would maintain partially the individual residence’s character) around them. This idea where the boundaries of industrial zoning are liquefied, results in the end and residential areas as well. Housing now is scattered in nature (even in form of mobile caravans), and space of collective activities is present among them in order to play the role of social condenser and avoid losing the sense of collectivity.

Figure 3: 6. Magnitogorsk city design.

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d. Unite_ communa

If something can describe the intent of the architecture of constructivism in relation to lifestyle, this is the working club. The “club” as a space, was for labors the intersection between “social” (private time is now shifted to social time) activity and industry. Not being able to provide for everyone his own apartment, the Soviet state tried to compensate in the collective level what could not offer in the individual one. The club, however, comes to introduce the culture of the new era: that of accessibility of cultural and social activities that occur in a collective form, in collective spaces.

Figure 4: Dom – Communa

It is a characteristic sample of architecture during this era not only from ideological point of view, but also morphological, functional and spatial: In morphological level, giant constructions with great vigor, and bold geometric shapes are designed. The building program responds to its aim, which is to form a social laboratory for the education of the workers. So, it provides workshops, sports facilities, rest areas and library.

In the urban level, the club is placed within the housing communities (Dom-communa). It aims at making the “cultural equipment” accessible to labor- masses and it is conceived as a building, serving the needs of a district near by the working place of labors. It operates as a unit of collectivity, placed in repetition in the city-plan with the ambition to operate as the basic space of social transformation.

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02. CITY OF THE CAPTIVE GLOBE & CAPITALISM a. Social & political context: Manhattan Manhattan is an exemplary- city of contemporary, Occidentalized lifestyle. For the area of Manhattan, the urban plan "block grid" was designed in 1807. With little respect to the city’s coherence, the plan fragmentized the city in 2028 sectors, forcing the residential development to evolve vertically.

The design and implementation of the skyscraper came as a seal of the needs of everyday life: to organize the mass occupation and mass labor, to maximize productivity, in a frame of exploiting technology to improve living conditions.

The urban division of Manhattan has been applied also in other Western cities. The effects on lifestyle are the outcome of the battle between modernization and sustainability, where intensification of habitation density shapes the post-modern city.

Manhattan’s evolution from post modernity to contemporary era, consists an experiment on reconciling eruption of human density, usage of technology and implementation of a revolutionary lifestyle: the one of the culture of congestion. (Koolhaas, 1974) Given the undeniable relationship of architecture industry of Manhattan with the formation of this culture, the conclusion may be that not the urban design applied, but the congestion itself, turned out to be the fundamental element of the metropolitan urban planning. In the process of which, the principle of profit, may have led the skyscrapers to such a height, and the human desire to such an unsatisfied extent.

Figure 5: Madelon Vriesendorp, Flagrant delit

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b. City_ the city of the captive globe In 1974, Koolhaas designs "The City of the Captive Globe". The general plan which describes Manhattan is a collage of the urban net, with lobotomized forms=skyscrapers, based on monolithic bases. The “pretentious� main body tends to reach infinity. In the middle of all the buildings, which keep equal distance from the adjacent ones, exactly in the city center, there is the Captive Globe! The Globe is in captivity among the other buildings, but in a sense, is the soul of the metropolis, and is supplied by the same urban system which provides for organizing people’s activities.

The town itself is defined by the existing mass - or the absence of mass- of the skyscrapers.

Each one, corresponds to different cultures, ideologies, furors, representing different sociopolitical, economic and aesthetic stereotypes that govern every organized society.

Metropolis itself initiates from the very idea of constant change, but in the end, the maintenance of a status, consistent to the culture of the city, is preventing the society form disappearing. The structure of the city is self-protected by meeting the mutating needs of people oven time: The monolithic basis of the buildings operate as ideological laboratories, and have the same static importance for the skyscrapers, as the ideas of people have on maintaining the structure of the city intact.

Figure 6: The city of the captive globe

Going back to the allegorical perception of the city, each building, -being a different science, culture or idea-, has a unique floor plan and is not repeated throughout the urban plan.

Overall, the whole city is trying to capture the accelerated generation of theories, conflicts, suggestions; it is a hymn to individual personality because science, art, poetry, forms of madness, can under ideal conditions destroy or restore the phenomenological reality which is changing under the burden of every new discovery.

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In terms of morphological perception, the dispute between form and function is final: the interior of the building is habitable, while the exterior adopts the dynamic of a sculpture and conceals the internal use. Each shell offers protection - isolation. The buildings are sturdy, clean, introverted, isolated one from another, unwilling to contribute to collective city level. As permanent monuments of individuality, they celebrate diversity and instability, the unstable social ties, the unstable personalities reside in the modern metropolis, which is, at any moment, ready to explode.

c. Unite _ hotel Sphinx (1975-76) The Sphinx Hotel is a design of Koolhaas based on the form and the psychology of "The City of the Captive Globe". Two giant blocks stand in the intersection of Broadway and 7th Avenue. The hotel was made to coexist with the surrounding streets, in contradiction to the buildings of "Captive globe" city, which were located in “non-place�. “Sphinx" is a luxury hotel, model of mass habitation, which includes all aspects of human activity: the legs are hosting a theater, sports facilities, a conference center and a restaurant.

Habitation areas are individual and luxurious, located on towers. The intermediate space is hosting offices. The neck of the sphinx has different forms integrated one over the other, a symbol of different coexisting ideologies, while the head can turn to stare different points in the city.

The design is a small satellite- city, as part of the metropolis. Everything is collected in a shell, protective of privacy. The activities are grouped according to the comforts of modern man, in order to have access to everything easily, as in the case of a shopping mall. The different forms of the neck represent diversity, but they also refer to the tolerance shown by people in modern cities due to needs of coexistence and survival.

The turning mechanism in the head of the sphinx suggests the use of technology to human service. The head of the Sphinx, indicates the possibility of the building to evolve endlessly towards the sky, or jack down. The nervous energy of the Metropolis as a whole and the arrogant character of modern man, are captured in the motion of the head up or down.

(Koolhaas, 1975)

Figure 7: Hotel Sphinx facing onto Time Square.

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03. CONCLUSIONS

a. The political system The differences between the two political systems are fundamental: In the communist society, people were made to believe that collectivization of lifestyle, equality in basic provisions, catholic participation in the industrial, production process will bring individual prosperity. So, man’s lifestyle has to be aligned with state’s promoted values: participation in work, education, participation in politics, retreating of individual bulkheads.

Similarly, in the capitalist system, the person retains the illusion of freedom, believes that the laws of the free market do not impose limits in individual choices because of the available margin of advancement in the hierarchy of the production process: financial rewards, power, diversification of individuality.

Except from the difference on the production & economic system which define in a great scale the characteristics of each political system, also relative in our analysis is the historical time frame: Constructivism was developed along with industrial revolution, while Manhattan had to embrace also technological revolution.

b. The urban plan In terms of urban planning, the design choices and the structure of the city reflect the social values and the relations in production process.

In the end, the plans for the socialist city were never realized, as industrialization of the country was never so advanced in order to complete them. The social issue (the transformation of society) was never implemented in final stage, likewise the habitation problem was never solved. However, the socialist city exceeded expectations and was translated into sustainable design options, loyal to the system of values they were born into.

Instead, Koolhaas’ plans do not refer to an uncompleted desired future state, but a state already formed. The network of Manhattan exposes theories, tactics, malfunctions result of collective unconsciousness.

Is Manhattan the utopia of the Soviets? Industrialization and standardization –constant obstacles in redevelopment of socialist city- had finally reached their zenith. The culture of this metropolis is a lie that became reality, a realized utopia. The absolute and universal industrial lifestyle, prefabricated and standardized, was ultimately realizable. Every man's desire regarding materialism was fulfilled due to development of technology: the man was turned to something else due to infinite possibilities of private production means, a turn in man’s nature that socialistic city did not manage to achieve through ideology alone.

The socialist city presents homogeneity in form as the ideal of equality was translated architecturally in repetition: culture of mass.

The paradox is that also The city of the Captive Globe presents intensive grid and homogeneity although it represents the society of inequality and heterogeneity: culture of congestion.

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c. The cities’ morphology

In terms of morphology, remarkable architectural movements of the last century have been influenced by political systems of the past: • Soviet system - Constructivism • Weimer - Modern style • Mussolinni, Nazis - Monumental style De-constructivism as a movement, found theoretical support in Derrida’s ideas and many representatives were influenced by De Stijl and geometric imbalances of Russian constructivism.

In terms of form, indeed sculptures - skyscrapers of de-construction share the dynamic, revolutionary form, the use of geometric shapes, the interest in the cut-off surfaces. However, the different system of values makes them very little actually related in operational level.

In theoretical level, however, the connection cannot be completely random. Does the fragmentation theory of deconstruction in a capitalist city has seeds in construction ideas of constructivism? Assuming, that in both cases the issue was the generation of new shells for the city life, using industrial applications (in both cases there is the reference to machines and standardization), but a different value system brought about different results, then the allegory of Koolhaas has been decoded.

00. Epilogue_ THE ESSENCE OF UTOPIA

The last connection between the city of socialism with that of Koolhaas is the concept of utopia.

The enemies of modern architecture managed to convince the masses the concept of constructivism was indifferent to functional necessity and was identical to the absurdity and utopia, while it was the opposite, at least with respect to the positions and racing practice of O.C.A representatives.

The city of Koolhaas by definition, was perceived as a city of irrationality, emotion, illusion, mania, phobia, but also pluralism and culture, thus genetically entered the world of utopia.

Since the city is inextricably linked to the real situation of urban congestion and contemporary lifestyle, results of industrialization, individualism and alienation, the Origins of "Captive Globe" are approaching dangerously current data, because utopia of today is tomorrow's reality.

….political systems generate architecture & architecture generates our civilization….

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REFERENCES

Books

1. Rem Koolhaas , Delirious New York, A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan, The Netherlands,010 Publishers, 1994 2. Anotole Kopp,Town & Revolution, Soviet Architecture & City Planning 1917-1935, New York, George Braziller Inc, 1970

On- line sources

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a39byn_aVHw 2. www.amazon.com/Delirious-New-York.../1885254008 3. www.amzon.co.uk/captive-globe.../B0006H589A

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