Master's Thesis

Autonomy vs. Contextualism The Barcelona Case Master’s Thesis Author: Uğur Güvenç Supervisor: Enric Llorach

Escola Tècnica Superior d'Arquitectura de Barcelona Màster Universitari en Estudis Avançats en Arquitectura Barcelona (MBArch) Contemporary Project 2017 - 2018

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would first like to thank my thesis advisor Enric Llorach of the Escola Tècnica Superior d'Arquitectura de Barcelona in Universitat PolitÊcnica de Catalunya who allowed this paper to be my own work, but steered me in the right direction whenever he thought I needed it during my studies in Masters Degree in Advanced Studies in Architecture.

Secondly, I would like to thank my associates in our architecture group Team101 for their unwavering support and inspiration.

Finally, I must express my very profound gratitude to my parents for providing me with unfailing support and continuous encouragement throughout my years of study. This accomplishment would not have been possible without them. Thank you.

ABSTRACT The debate between the autonomy and contextualism theories in architecture is ever-present. In the past few decades, many practices have demonstrated approaches that polarize the debate even more and the contemporary discourse reduces these theories to the practical applications and key concepts. The academy, especially in the field of architectural education seems to have fallen to the same predicament, setting its so-called trends in the design field. The aim of this research is to rediscover and scrutinize the discontinuities in architectural history that constitute the origins of the autonomy and contextualism debate and to lay out an agenda for any prospective design practice or project. Rather than dwelling on the archive of images or key concepts that the contemporary discourse prolifically created which seems to set the ultimate reference for any discussion these days considering the debate, the processes of transformation in the socio-political, cultural and economic structure of post-industrial societies and their impacts on the formation of built environment and the contemporary human life are designated as the focal point of research to produce a new theory.

CONTENT Autonomy vs. Contextualism The Barcelona Case 1. Autonomy a. Prologue b. The Project of Autonomy - Political Autonomy - Italian Autonomia

c. The Concept of Locus - Geographic Singularity - New Centro Direzionale by Aldo Rossi

d. Invention and Utopia - Design and Capitalist Development - Campo Marzio by Giovanni Battista Piranesi

e. Fragments and History - The Collage City by Colin Rowe - Self-sufficient Language and Fragmentation

2. Contextualism a. Critical Regionalism - An Architecture of Resistance -BagsvÌrd Church by Jørn Utzon

b. The Non-Modern Thesis - Technology, Place and Anti-traditionalism - Regenerative Architecture

3. The Conclusion 4. Catalytic Emulsion a. The Barcelona Case b. The Site c. The Project

PROLOGUE Throughout the entire course of architectural history, the profession always had its independent methods of form and space creation irrespective of exterior factors. Although the practice has long used these methods, the theory that made the classification began with the Enlightenment period. The concept of autonomy in architecture, especially in the contemporary period is associated with many formal positions that are in some cases even deemed as irresponsibilities to the exteriority of the profession, however, the origins constitute a scheme far more sophisticated and prolific than those formal attributions. A concept, that appears to be a mere justification for the professionals for an architectural radicalism nowadays, the autonomy debate underwent many phases which all played crucial roles in the formation of an extensive theory. This chapter explains some of those phases in an informative method and furthermore analyzes, criticizes and interprets the theories aiming to form a framework that can constitute the guidelines for a possible contemporary practice in the field of architecture.

To be able to understand the concept of autonomy in the architectural field, the research begins with the absolute origins that helped to form a theory of autonomy in the twentieth century. The “political autonomy” idea is rediscovered in the social, political and the cultural context of twentieth-century production systems. The capitalist production and rapid technological development with its highly innovative systems constitute the core regulator of the chapter according to which many analogies are made in terms of autonomy theories both in architecture and politics. Pier Vittorio Aureli’s influential book “The Project of Autonomy” creates the guidelines for .1

the chapter with its prolific research. Aureli tackles the issues in a strong historical and theoretical manner however afterward he dives into the realm of practice. The movement of Operaism which finds its foundations in the political scenery of 1960’s and 1970’s in Italy, conflicting with the ever-emergent capitalist production is another topic of discussion as it leads to “Autonomia”, a group of intellectuals favoring political autonomy in the wake of worker and students protests in the following years. The political individualism idea that was represented by this group creates a strong analogy with the idea of autonomy in architecture.

In the context of this prolific discussion, the interdependency of politics, production systems, and architectural practice brings closer the radical intellectuals such as Manfredo Tafuri and Aldo Rossi in Italy and Peter Eisenman and Colin Rowe in the United States in the production of a theory of “autonomous architecture” and their views constitute another topic for the research. The Locus theory presented by Aldo Rossi emerges as a response to the techno-utopian embrace of the contemporary discourse favored by his counterparts. Opposing the city-territory idea that presents a totalizing image for the prospective urban development which is dominantly dictated by capitalist development, Rossi favors for the independence of urban artifacts for the achievement of geographic singularity in the erection of architecture. Although the theory of Locus is, at first sight, an autonomous looking to the city, it does not become detached from social, cultural and political context. The relationship of typology and place is also further discussed in the theory of Locus.

Understanding the similarities and the differences between the theories of Rossi and Tafuri is also essential to be able to appreciate the varieties within a single concept of autonomy. The proposal for a competition project for the design of the “New Centro Direzionale” building of Turin is further discussed to analyze these differences and elaborate on Rossi’s unwavering opposition for the techno

utopian approach. The proposal rejects the overwhelming tendency to render an infrastructural scheme that complies with the domination of capitalist and technological development that took over the urbanization scheme of Turin.

Tafuri’s view on capitalist production and its effects on architectural practice is further discussed with the help of his very personal statements. The opposition to the totalizing image of the city-territory idea was made by Rossi and similarly, Tafuri rejects any overarching ideological statement in the production of architecture. The process for the definition of a concrete relationship between the urban organization and the formation of a single artifact has begun with the Enlightenment dialect according to Tafuri. To exemplify his claim, he discusses the approach of Claude Nicolas Ledoux and Jean-Jacques Lequeu which can also be branded as autonomous in their own contexts. However, a profound analysis begins with his criticism of the work of Giovanni Battista Piranesi, specifically on Campo Marzio. The formal invention was achieved in Piranesi’s work, considering the historical reference given in the production of fragments, however when brought together, the total image for the production of an urban development is very doubtful according to Tafuri as he condemns it as repetitive. Piranesi’s Campo Marzio constitutes an experimental attitude, however the lack of freedom given to the fragments, in this case, analogous with the geographic singularity of urban artifact presented

by Rossi, ultimately leads to a failure in the overall image.

Campo Marzio eventually creates the distinction between Rowe’s an Eisenman's approach.

The absolute origins and maybe some overlooked theories in the definition of an “autonomous architecture” are discovered in the chapter. Beginning with a political and polemical attitude, the chapter reaches to a formal discussion with the help of several case studies and essential analogies. The character of the chapter considering the approach employed to extract analogies between abstract notions as political and polemical processes and concrete realities and produced works will become the character of the thesis. The overall contribution of the chapter in the formation of a new theory in the practice of architecture is to be complemented in the concluding chapter.

At this point Peter Eisenman’s approach to autonomy is finally discussed as the work of Piranesi is perceived as an important framework for the justification of his “fragmentation” idea in architecture. The Collage City, produced by the master of Eisenman, Colin Rowe, is discussed beforehand to lay the foundations in order to comprehend the theories of Eisenman. The Nolli Map constitutes an important reference for Rowe’s work and in the later stage the difference between The Nolli Map and Piranesi’s

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THE PROJECT OF AUTONOMY The concept of autonomy in the field of architecture has been widely discussed over the last few decades. The contemporary discourse in the field seems to tackle the topic in strictly architectural terms and assuming contextualism as its counterpart on the other edge. However, the analysis revealing the origins of both concepts has to be made in order to achieve a system of thought for architects in which they can take advantage of the dialectical relationship of both concepts.

In this context, comprehending the historical evolution of the idea of “political autonomy” and analysis of events that led to its interpretation in the architectural field is essential. The Italian architect and theorist Pier Vittorio Aureli sheds light on the topic with his research on the project of autonomy proposed by Greek-French philosopher Cornelius Castoriadis. In his lecture “The Retreat from Autonomy” at Boston University in 1989, Castoriadis discusses and objects the widely accepted historical periodization of modern/postmodern, a distinction which will later propose a crucial basis for the autono1 my versus contextualism debate. Postmodernity had many implications in various fields including architecture, however, the problems that it brought along concerning the human reasoning and the categorization of historical periods could not be overlooked.

Castoriadis then proposed a new scheme that was based on a political preconception of history in which the social and individual meanings of Western thinking was attributed to the project of autonomy. Aureli in his research summarises Castoriadis’ ideas.

1. Aureli, P. (2013). The Project of Autonomy. 4th ed. New York: The Temple Hoyne Buell Center and Princeton Architectural Press, p.4.

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By project of autonomy, Castoriadis meant the establishment of a relationship between individuals and their knowledge different from the one inherited from previous periods. He accordingly defined three historical periods within the project of autonomy, which he identified as beginning at the end of the ”true” Middle Ages: first, the reconstruction of the Western thinking; second, the critical period, that is 2 modern, and third, retreat into conformism.

The postmodern thought in the analysis of events and theories in various fields had a viewpoint in which it valued the historical references greatly and in various cases, it also reinterpreted and incorporated those references in the production of new thought systems. The modern thought, on the other hand, had an approach in search of radical and original solutions to current events. It did not take historical references as direct influences in the production of new thought systems but rather it was a direct result of the events that occurred during the previous few centuries such as industrial revolution, the growing scale of wars with new technologies and its effects, the rise and clash of capitalist and Marxist ideas and etc. The modernity coming after these impactful events had to tackle with problems as economic crises, the birth of new social classes and struggles, necessities for a modern way of life, housing problems and had to produce rapid responses, meanings, and new thought systems which resulted in the creation of its own context.

The possible analogy between the autonomy/contextualism and modern/postmodern pairs seems inevitable at this point if we want to take a leap to the architectural discourse immediately. It is at this point that fully understanding Castoriadis’ objection to the strict periodization of modern and postmodern is essential to draw a meaningful and productive conclusion which can be conceptualized in a dialectical manner in the autonomy and contextualism debate.

2. Aureli, P. (2013). The Project of Autonomy. 4th ed. New York: The Temple Hoyne Buell Center and Princeton Architectural Press, p.4.

The modern period in Aureli’s research is defined as the period between Enlightenment (beginning around the 1750’s) and the end of totalitarianism (1955-1960). Aureli states that according to Castoriadis, the era can be characterized by the convergence of two beliefs the autonomy of the subject and the endless expansion of rationality 3 implicit in technological development. In this context, the expansion of rationality, in particular, was deemed as a mindset appropriated and proposed by the ever-growing reach of capitalism with its convenient collaboration with technological development.

Understanding the capitalism not only as a mere accumulation of wealth and a political process but also as a scientific field which is highly innovative and revolutionizing in terms of production, consumption, and finance is crucial. Along with the rapid technological development, rationality and human reasoning were understood as both the chance to freedom and supremacy on accumulated capital and this notion led to a common ground for autonomy and capitalism.

This duality within capitalism also brought many social, political and cultural disputes according to Aureli, and finally in 1960’s, maybe for the last time, intellectuals questioned the political and cultural hegemony of capitalism over many fields. However, this questioning led to an indifference in which intellectuals stopped critically analyzing the rationality that capitalism proposed, and according to Castoriadis it was a political agnosticism.

Furthermore, Aureli mentions the success of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s book “Empire”, in which they claim that capitalism does not need any approval on a national level because, with innovation and rapid technological development it brings, it stands as a global power and consolidates its position as an imperial entity. However, they also accept the irony that the multitudes capitalism offers to the society also have the potential to be the source to question its supremacy and show political resistance 5 at any later period.

What we have here is a collection of half-truths perverted into stratagems of evasion. The value of today’s theory is that it mirrors prevailing trends. Its misery is that it simply rationalizes them through a highbrow of apologetics of conformity and banality.

Complacently mixed up with loose but fashionable talk about “pluralism” and “respect” for the difference for “the other”, it ends up by glorifying eclecticism covering up sterility and banality and providing a 4 generalized version of anything goes.

In Aureli’s further analysis it is understood that Hardt’s and Negri’s project can be narrowed down to the concept of autonomy as presented by a group of intellectuals in Italy in 1970’s called Autonomia, another mode of political autonomy which brings us a little closer the concept of autonomy in architecture. According to Aureli, the idea of political autonomy presented in the book “Empire” which had its origins in the "operaism" movement defined as workerist has been regarded as too ambitious and a

3. Aureli, P. (2013). The Project of Autonomy. p.5.

4. Cornelius Castoriadis, “The Retreat from Autonomy: Postmodernism as Generalized Conformism,” in The World in Fragments (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997), p.32.

Up to this point, the capitalist thought, highly innovative systems that it brings, multitudes it offers, and the rapid technological development presents a theoretical response to the traditional modes of governmental and political systems, an approach in which the precedent accumulation of knowledge ceases to be the primary source of political theory, and the novel modes of “political autonomy” is formed more easily thanks to the arrival of modernity.

Although the postmodern period breaks the continuity in certain senses, this process presents a direct analogy with the contemporary era in architecture in which technology as a primary source of knowledge and analysis stands as a global overarching entity and devalues historical reference and precedent analysis, and in some cases does not even need the affirmation of regional knowledge and values.

5. Aureli, P. (2013). The Project of Autonomy. p.7.

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grandiose narrative of modern politics for a “postpolitical period” especially for the aftermath of a 6 defeated communism at the end of 1980’s.

In this context, Italian Autonomia was presented to the English - speaking world in 1980 as a “creative”, “futuristic”, “neo -anarchistic”, “post-ideologi7 cal” and “non - representative” political movement.

The Autonomia was a leftist movement of intellectual activists that were effective during late 1960’s and throughout the 1970’s. At the beginning of 1960’s the political scenery in Italy was full of 8 student’s protests and worker’s strikes. The workerist and unionist Operaism movement were gaining attention however after 1970’s, although originated from Operaism, the Autonomia movement was in favor of political individualism. The core meaning of Operaism can be explained as the discussion that the evolving capital is the result of the worker’s rebellious initiative and in this sense, the capitalism can be understood as the magnitude of power exercised by workers, namely, the ability of the workers themselves, through the battle against work, to propel capital to keep evolving in order to deprive the emergent probabilities of resistance of their arms. In this context, capitalism cannot be understood as an open-ended, natural evolution of “productive forces”. Aureli states that the central element of the Operaism theory was the political subjectivity of the worker, not the natural evolution or the scientific objectivity of the production system. The reason why Autonomia was independent of its origin Operaism was that while Operaism took a stance within a complete communist perspective, Autonomia laid its foundation in a somewhat radical anti-communist perspective.

6. Aureli, P. (2013). The Project of Autonomy. p.8.

7. Aureli, P. (2013). The Project of Autonomy. p.8. These words are cited in Aureli’s notes as Sylvére Lotringer’s which are used to introduce the upcoming new edition of the issue on Autonomia that he edited for “Semiotext”(e) in 1980. Aureli proposes to see Sylvére Lotringer and Cristian Marazzi, eds., Autonomia, Post-Political Politics (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007)

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In this sense, the argument of Autonomists still depended on the logic of capitalism, which in its deepest essence is the stimulus for the unlimited desire of production supported by the mastery of technological development as a way to create and recreate the 9 conditions of its own reproduction.

The effect of technological development on the idea of political autonomy is restated here by Aureli. The correlation between the state of politics, its evolution through modern and postmodern periods, the capitalist production methods with their highly innovative systems, its reflections on the workerist ideologies and their intellectuals constitutes a powerful ground for the debate of political autonomy.

Therefore, the analogy between political and architectural autonomy theories in terms of the dependency on technological development and innovation is once again legitimized. This analogy is furthermore reinforced by the critical regionalism theories, which will be later discussed in detail, and constitutes an important basis for the autonomy and contextualism debate in the architectural field.

After a detailed and critical analysis of the theory of political autonomy, Aureli complements his discussion with the effects of autonomy on other fields as well. The analysis continues with the fundamental notion of Autonomia surrounding the architectural discourse in Italy during 1960’s although it was presented as a product of 1970’s. The autonomy of architectural form distanced from political, cultural, social and commercial meanings was discovered, named “autonomous architecture” and was related to a period of recent architectural history. This specific reading occurred at a moment where architectural profession was increasingly commercialized and particularly in Europe occurred simultaneously with the collapse of public and state initiatives as primary 10 executives of architecture and urban design.

8. Lowry, S. (2018). Worker and student struggles in Italy, 1962-1973. [online] Libcom.org. Available at: http://libcom.org/history/1962-1973-worker-student-struggles-italy [Accessed 7 Jun. 2018].

9. Aureli, P. (2013). The Project of Autonomy. p.11.

10. Aureli, P. (2013). The Project of Autonomy. p.12.

In this context, the notion of autonomy in architecture was regarded as a strategic backward maneuver, an obstacle in the way of improving the existing and emergent circumstances. In such an environment with the ongoing debates surrounding the architectural criticism, completely different personalities were grouped together by the courtesy of their common critical perspective against the exhaustion of reformist equipment of the modernity in the context of postmodern culture and post World War II architectural discourse; Aldo Rossi and Manfredo Tafuri in Italy and Peter Eisenman and Colin Rowe in the United States.

This collaboration and common ground founded thanks to the shared point of view played a crucial role for the development of critical architectural theory and discourse during the 1970’s, however, as Aureli elaborates that the analysis of the work of Rossi and Tafuri underwent substantial misunderstandings because although there was some common ground to their discussions, they had not radical but significant differences in terms of architecture and its 11 politics. The independent position taken against the political, social and historical context in the formation of Rossi’s idea of autonomous architecture was the cause of these several misunderstandings. According to Rossi, the concept of autonomy required an objection, not to the reality of the emergent postindustrial city, but to the empirical reading of the same reality and to the unsophisticated embrace of techno-utopian envisions of the contemporary discourse.

Aureli furthermore states that the achievement of autonomy according to Rossi was possible with the reconstruction of political, social and cultural meanings of urban phenomena totally separated from any 12 “technocratic determinism”. According to Aureli, Rossi’s idea of autonomy in architecture and urbanism shares intriguing similarities with the ideas of Mario Tronti in politics, as in a period of total incorporation of the technological rationality of planning by capitalism, Rossi pursued an understanding of 11. Aureli, P. (2013). The Project of Autonomy. p.12.

12. Aureli, P. (2013). The Project of Autonomy. p.13.

architecture which would be a vital apparatus for the theoretical reconstruction of a city.

A group of young architects who were teaching at the Instituto Universitario di Architettura di Venezia (IUAV), having a close relationship to the Communist Party was casually gathering around Rossi as he elaborated his theories, working as an architect and contributing to the magazine called “Casabella continuità”. This group later gained prominence as “Scuola di Venezia”. Aureli states that as in the case of Operaism being overshadowed by its successor Autonomia, the nucleus known as “Venice Group”, later developed under the name of “Gruppo Architettura” without Rossi, was also overshadowed by another “School of Venice” dominated by Tafuri this time and the new formation was mentioned under the name of “Instituto di Storia”. Rossi later published the book named “L’architettura Della città” after he became a professor at Politecnico in Milan.

Before this shift in the theory of “Venice Group”, there was another attitude within the group, as Aureli states, an informal community of architects who preferred to work on the theory of architecture and city over a professional practice. This movement was also read as a reaction to the long supremacy of craft-oriented professionals such as Carlos Scarpa at IUAV. Aureli also mentions a very similar attitude characterized by Archizoom and Superstudio, although they were in a completely different context 13 and political attitude in Florence. Finally, Aureli concludes this part of his research with the following; As I aim to demonstrate, these two types of Autonomy projects, one applied to politics and the other applied to the city were not about the destruction of capitalist culture and bourgeois history per se but, on the contrary, their deep analysis and instrumental use. Autonomy was not the creation of politics and poetics ex-nihilio but rather an audacious effort to appropriate the political realm in order to construct 14 an alternative to capitalist domination.

13. Aureli, P. (2013). The Project of Autonomy. p.12. Historical information regarding prominent figures retreated from second and third paragraphs of the page 13 and 14.

14. Aureli, P. (2013). The Project of Autonomy. p.14.

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The analogy between the autonomy in politics and autonomy in architecture finds its legitimacy thanks to the similar effects of technological development and innovation on both fields, the outcomes which can also be deemed as the repercussions of capitalist production systems. This analogy constitutes the central part of this thesis and will be elaborated later with the help of the detailed analysis of Aldo Rossi’s work and Tafuri’s views on the autonomy in architecture, and critical regionalism theory of Kenneth Frampton, which also plays a crucial role in the debate.

Politecnico, including Aldo Rossi and Vittorio Gregotti. Besides writing on architects such as Peter Behrens and Le Corbusier, and on books such as Hans Sedlmayr's Verlust del Mitte, and Emil Kaufmann’s Von Leduix bis Le Corbusier, Rossi edited a special issue in 1959 entirely devoted to Loos, who at that time was still considered a secondary figure of the Modern Movement. Loos was key to Rossi’s reinterpretation of the legacy of rationalism and a way to move beyond its image of “functionalism” and “International Style”. Rossi’s interest in Loos and the Viennese cultural context may be seen as comparable to Operaismo’s interest in figures like Gustav Mahler and Robert Musil, the only two non-political thinkers cited 15 in Tronti’s Operai e capitale.

figure 1. Casabella Continuità Magazinecover Casabella Continutà, special edition on Adolf Loos, 1959. Casabella continuità (1953 - 1965) was refounded by Ernesto Nathan Rogers from the original Casabella established by Guiseppe Pagano in 1928. Rogers’s intention was to reinforce the relationship between the practice of architecture and its theoretical discourse by addressing broad themes of philosophy and politics. Rogers supported the contributions of his students and assistants at the Milan .7

fig 1.. Aureli, P. (2013). The Project of Autonomy. The cover page of Casabella Continuità scanned from the “Illustrations” chapter of Aureli’s book.

15. Aureli, P. (2013). The Project of Autonomy. The informative text is retreated directly from the personal notes of Pier Vittorio Aureli which are listed below the images in “Illustrations” chapter of the same book.

standing the city. The concept of Locus opposes abstract urban categories that were fashionable at the time such as planning and environment. In the last part, Rossi analyzes the economic and political modalities by which urban phenomena evolve. The book clearly reflects an effort on the part of Rossi and Aymonino to unify architecture, urbanism, and history in the interest of a general assessment of the city seen as a relationship between its physical form and deeper 16 structures.

figure 2. L’Architettura Della Cità, Magazinecover

Aldo Rossi, L’Architettura Della Cita, 1966. Written

by Rossi between 1963 and 1965 while teaching in Venice with Carlo Aymonino, the book originated as notes for Rossi’s classes and the articles he had published in Casabella. It was assembled with editorial assistance from Rossi’s wife, the actress Sonia Gessner. The book is divided into four parts. In the first part, Rossi summarizes the overarching principles of his theory, the dialectical unity between the urban artifact and typological knowledge of the city. In the second part, he outlines a new methodology of urban analysis, introducing concepts such as the study area and provides a basic classification of the primary elements that constitute urban phenomena; a fundamental case study is Berlin, whose urban history Rossi had previously treated in Casabella.

In the third part, the most important of the book, Rossi introduces his crucial concept of the locus, which has to do with the singulartiy of the urban place and thus the primary role of geography in under-

fig 2.. Aureli, P. (2013). The Project of Autonomy. The cover page of L’Architettura Della Città scanned from the “Illustrations” chapter of Aureli’s book.

16. Aureli, P. (2013). The Project of Autonomy. The informative text is retreated directly from the personal notes of Pier Vittorio Aureli which are listed below the images in “Illustrations” chapter of the same book.

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THE CONCEPT OF LOCUS Given the importance of the theories of Aldo Rossi to the definition of architectural autonomy, Aureli continues to unfold Rossi’s approach, particularly in the construction of an urban theory regulating the cityscape because the formation of an alternative to the capitalist city and the proposal of an autonomous architecture required the constitution of such theories. As Aureli states, in the 1950’s Italian architectural scenery was increasingly dominated by the idea of professionalism and it was an attempt to connect craftsmanship, artisanal design and building techniques with the urgent demands of modernization mainly generated by the swift advance of postwar capitalist development. However in the 1960’s, new political conflicts and social struggles started to resurface on many levels, and it necessitated a cultural and conceptual renovation, including within the inner discourse of architecture and urbanism.

This time, rather than the remodernization of the architecture and city, instead, the need for a renewal appeared to be of utmost importance demanding the 17 refoundation of architecture in relation to the city.

The manifestation of the idea of Locus of Aldo Rossi, according to Aureli, came at a point where two theoretical paths were considered by many intellectuals as the possible alternatives that had validity in the context of advancing processes of integration of social relations in a period of contemporary capitalist development: one approach from Rossi, the political recognition of architectural autonomy in terms of reinvention of classifications such as typology and place, the other from Tafuri, 17. Aureli, P. (2013). The Project of Autonomy. p.53. Reinterpreted in the light of the information that Aureli presents in the second paragraph

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a criticism of the ideology of the capitalist city, which manifested itself in the modernity and in the new 18 wave of technological avant-gardism in the 1960’s.

However, according to Rossi, the theory also meant to surpass the criticism of ideology and redefine and reintroduce itself in the realm of the practiced project. In a symposium organized by the school of Venice and in the aftermath of his completion of the book L’Architetturra Della Città, Rossi declared the following statement; The creation of a theory is the first objective of an architectural school, prior to all other types of research. A design theory is the most important part of every form of architecture; thus, in an architectural school, the course in the theory should be the driving force in the curriculum. It is remarkable how rarely one encounters theories of architecture or, in other terms, rational explanations of how to make architecture.

One stumbles across only a few writings on this matter, by either the most naive or else the most outstanding individuals. Above all, one notices how those who adopt a few principals of a theoretical type become so uncertain about them as to avoid trying to verify them, which is the most important moment of any theory. In other words, to establish a relationship between the theory and making of architecture. In the end, one can only say this: that for some a theory is only a rationalization of a previous action; therefore it tends to be a norm, rather than a theory. At the risk of appearing naive, my proposal is to outline a true and appropriate theory of architecture, in other words, to form a theory of design, as an integral part of a theory 19 of architecture.

18. Aureli, P. (2013). The Project of Autonomy. p.55. Reinterpreted in the light of the information that Aureli presents in the second paragraph 19. Aureli, P. (2013). The Project of Autonomy. The quotation is retreated directly from the book. Aureli, in his personal notes in the chapter “Notes and Credits” explains the source as such; Published as “Architettura per i musei”, in Guida Canella et al., Teoria della progettazione architettonica ( Bari: Edizioni Dedalo, 1968), p. 123.

With this manifestation, Rossi sheds light on some of the most controversial discussions. The relevance and the degree of the utilization of architectural theory in the schools of architecture are questionable at any given time. Moreover, as in many other fields and practices, the ambiguity of the relationship between theory and practice, the questions in terms of which should follow the traces of the other, or should it be an iterative process in which the validity of both concepts is questioned and examined at each stage and the decision is taken accordingly, are ever-present. The latter seems to be the position taken by many collective practices in the scene of contemporary architecture, as they tackle with concrete problems corresponding to realities that modernization and capitalist development brought upon the city and contemporary human life. However, the academy of architecture and many prominent figures who has shaped the architectural discourse throughout the course of architectural history appear to have overwhelmingly taken a position in which the theory is the origin, the source and the main generator of the architectural practice. Rossi takes a similar position, however, his approach also makes it possible for schools of architecture to generate their own theories independently and regulate their practice accordingly in the evaluation of its students’ work.

This system creates “Ecoles” in the discourse and practice of architecture as it has already done previously in the 18th and 19th Century. However, Rossi is also persistent in elaborating on the relationship of design and theory and at the risk of appearing naive, he aims to lay the foundations for a theory of design as an integral part of an architectural theory. Whether Rossi achieved his objective in this sense is open to discussion.

Aureli states that, according to Carlo Aymonino, who was the director of the design department at IUAV in the 1970’s and was a rather close figure to Rossi, the generation of the likes of Aldo Rossi was characterized by their will to replace the architectural history interpreted within an art-historical perspective by an urban history under20 stood in relation to political development.

Taking Aymonino’s views into consideration, Aureli interprets that Rossi’s approach presented a paradigmatic case aiming to initiate an autonomous ground of research in which architectural form was interpreted as the primary means of constituting the politics of the modern city. According to Aureli, Rossi’s theory of autonomous architecture was not only the rejection of unsophisticated functionalism and a specificity in the practice of the discipline but also an exploration for rational language, a completely new understanding of the form freed from the styles serving the supremacy of bourgeois institutions. According to Rossi, it was time for the socialist city to construct its own tradition by appropriating and reinventing the legacy of its predecessor, namely the city of the 21 bourgeoisie.

Within this context, according to Rossi, the framework was not an alteration of architectural methodology or urban form, but to narrate a novel theoretical perspective on the architecture and city favoring the priority of political choices over technocratic ones. In this sense, Rossi objected the autocratic planning of the city with its natural integration of technology, and he favored for an understanding of a city as a site of political choices, as a “geography of places irreducible to the totality and continuity of 22 urbanization”.

The theory of Locus was a proposal for an alternative urban theory which constituted Rossi’s polemical attitude towards the classification of city territory. The city territory theory can be summarized as an idea of a framework that organizes the entirety of urban territory in order to make it efficient and more productive, which was foreseen by capitalist instrumentalization. Taking into account Rossi’s research and writings, Locus can be understood as a

20. Carlo Aymonino, Il Significato della città (Padua: Marcilio 2000), p.4. Source retreated from the “Notes and Credits” chapter of Aureli’s book “The Project of Autonomy”.

21. Aureli, P. (2013). The Project of Autonomy. p.58. The information interpreted in the paragraph is retreated from the first paragraph.

22. Aureli, P. (2013). The Project of Autonomy. p.58.

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theory whose objective is to respond to these processes of capitalist integration and instrumentalization.

Rossi criticised the theoreticians that utilized the classifications from the contemporary planning practice and condemned the imperceptive positivist faith put into urban development. Rossi’s theory was strongly opposing the mystification of the city territory theory and insisted that the concreteness of the urban artifact and the architecture of the city are the most pertinent and accurate instruments of urban analysis and design. Rather than perceiving the city as indefinite territory formed by the classifications of rapid urbanization, Rossi recommended seeing the city as a place formed by politics. Looking from his point of view, only an analysis of architecture could reveal that the constitution of the parts of a city is not reducible to the common denominator of technological development. According to Rossi one of the classifications of such an analysis and theory was “typology” which can be explained as a science, an understanding about the creation and evolution of urban forms irreducible to the monolithic and autocratic idea of urban development and the singularity of urban artifact as a moment of decision where the typological principles were implemented in the real city. The common ground where the typology corresponded to the singularity of the urban artifact was neither an urban planning schema with its diagrammatic and abstract representations nor a “cityscape” with its iconic depiction of urban scenes, but it was more of an urban geography understanding including 23 the idea of Locus. Aureli states that by Locus, Rossi meant the geographic singularity of architecture’s creation, comprehended not as just empirical evidence but as a universal structural condition. Rossi’s extensive study on the French urban geography school resulted in a reading and perception of urban space as a field of fragmenting forces and as a complete entity whose creation and evolution had a 24 perceptible structure.

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According to Aureli, Rossi interpreted the idea of Locus as a manifestation of singular points within the overall framework of the city. He writes the following statement in an essential passage of L’Architettura Della Città and in light of this information Aureli interprets that for Rossi, The Locus constitutes the very limit of any intervention or interpretation of the city; A geographer like Sorre could suggest the possibility of a theory of spatial division and, based on this, postulate the existence of single points. The Locus, so conceived, emphasizes the conditions and qualities within undifferentiated space which are necessary for 25 understanding an urban artifact.

Rossi objected to the idea of the techno-capitalist view of urbanization which was an existing part of any planning practice while he was researching and forming his theory. The manifestation of Locus and other concepts accompanying it such as monumentality and collective memory, characterized by their singular nature and which are dominant in his book L’Architettura Della Città, should be understood not as efforts to recover the traditional view of the city, but rather as efforts to initiate a new political reading according to Aureli. Rossi appears to suggest that there was a chance to perceive the city as an arena of conclusive and singular events whose definitive forms could present a challenge to the urban phenomena and the flux surrounding them by proposing a clear theory that envisioned a city resistant to the anxiety of capitalist change and innovation.

To Rossi, the purpose of the autonomous reading of the city was to be able to assess the real dynamic of discontinuous events, beyond their iconic visibility and beyond the superficial image of the city. It was the reason why he named his book the architecture of 26 the city.

23. Aureli, P. (2013). The Project of Autonomy. p.62. The information interpreted in the paragraph is retreated from the second, third paragraph.

24. Aureli, P. (2013). The Project of Autonomy. p.63.

25. Aureli, P. (2013). The Project of Autonomy. p.63.

26. Aureli, P. (2013). The Project of Autonomy. p.64. The information is retreated driectly from the second paragraph.

Rossi defended the idea that the architectural study of the city should elaborate on the geographic continuities which were the elements that structured the city and also on the historical continuities that described the evolution of the city. In this study, he placed the Locus as a universal condition of singularity, as a conceptual framework. The architectural project, according to Rossi was regarded as autonomous looking to the city, however not detached from it, contrarily, the individual intervention had a clearly outlined relationship to the overall social, cultural and political context.

An exemplary work of Rossi as a reflection of his position is taken as a case study by Aureli. The project was presented together with Luca Meda and Gianugo Polesello for a competition entry, the new administrative center of Turin in 1962. The competition was interpreted as a paradigmatic test case for the themes of new urban dimension and the city territory idea. The participants overwhelmingly sought an architectural language to convey phenomena that surpassed architecture such as the expansions in planning communications, information exchange, the utilization of new technologies which were all interpreted as the indications of a sweeping renewal of the relationship between labor and the city. Aureli summarizes the approach with the following words; It is therefore not surprising that many of the entries, including the one submitted by AUA, led by Tafuri and Piccinato, seem to have translated the theme of the new urban dimension with all its cultural and technological values into megastructural organi27 cist and open work forms.

In contrast to the prevailing scenario, Rossi and his colleagues proposed the stern and closed forms of a monumental square building with an internal court. According to Aureli, the structure highlights itself as a monumental exception to the city with its interpretation of the Roman plan of Turin, an

27. Aureli, P. (2013). The Project of Autonomy. p.67.

extrusion of a chessboard grid. Aureli furthermore analyzes the similarities the proposal shares with the Mole building of Alessandro Antonelli, especially in terms of the interpretation of this chessboard grid, however, Antonelli’s building is associated directly to the grid and Rossi’s project is located on the periphery of the city, an analogous reconstruction which reinterpreted the chessboard grid as a typological theme. It was not a reinterpretation of an existing norm, but rather an analogy made through this norm as a form of exception. Almost all the other projects were presenting an impression of the modernizing infrastructure of Turin, shaped by the technological novelties, however, Rossi’s project was put forward as a critical and dialectical confrontation with the exist28 ing city.

figure 3. New Centro Direzionale, Torino Rossi and his teammates Luca Meda and Gianugo Polesello took part in this important competition for the new Centro Direzionale, conceived as a response to the emergent urban phenomena of the city-territory, and the service sector’s increasing hegemony in Turin. Rossi’s sketches show the Roman grid of Turin juxtaposed with the dome of Alessandro Antonelli’s Mole, built in the second half of the nineteenth century, and with his proposed plan for the 29 new building.

28. Aureli, P. (2013). The Project of Autonomy. p.67. fig 3.. Aureli, P. (2013). The Project of Autonomy. Aldo Rossi, sketches for a competition project for the new administrative center of Turin, 1962, scanned from the “Illustrations” chapter, complementary text (29.) retreated directly

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Objecting the idea of an infrastructural scheme with its visual and technical attributions, instead, the entry projected a precisely defined Locus and considering its form and location, it greatly contrasted and conflicted with the other parts of the city.

Similar to his early objection to the city-territory idea, Rossi here again represented not a totalizing image of a city development scheme but a clearly defined form that both created and limited the advancing urban development. The project was immediately rejected by the jury as “reactionary architecture” and labeled as a “Stalinist court for mass execution”. Aureli states his personal opinion concerning the attitude of the jury with the following words; It’s hardcore character, which proposed to offer a civic reference within the city that exposed the new geography of Turin’s labor force, was condemned by those who represented the dominant class interests.

They preferred to conceal their power behind the rhetoric of a Centro Direzionale that purported to be 30 an efficient, futuristic Eden of labor.

30. Aureli, P. (2013). The Project of Autonomy. p.67.

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figure 4. New Centro Direzionale, Torino physical model

However, according to Aureli, the project with its severe civic character was not intentionally developed as an architecture which is resistant to power in Rossi’s view, however, it nevertheless left open space for its contemporaries in the city. The theory of a city consisting of conflicting parts was therefore indirectly but implicitly expressed in the project. Considering the theoretical position taken by Rossi, it can be easily understood that architecture should not fail to be an expression of power for the supremacy of prevailing class, on the contrary, in making decisions for the city, it should position itself with reference to the opposing forces. Rossi’s project presented itself to be a new civic monument which by its virtue of strong critical presence is immediately referred to its adversary. Although the dominant class sought to avoid political responsibility in terms of its

fig 4.. Pinterest. (2018). PFC. [online] Available at: https://www.pinterest.com.mx/pin/588704982511493291/ [Accessed 11 Jun. 2018].

For Rossi, consequently, the necessity for a project to express a discussion using its own formal devices with respect to power was of utmost importance. Rossi defended the idea that it was only possible to make a political choice by basing the discussion on such a clear formal proposal and also this approach, for a community could provide a way to decide collectively in a mode of representation of a city.

figure 5. New Centro Direzionale, Torino site plan

role within the capitalist development of a city, Rossi always pursued to disclose this role, making it straightforward that all buildings in the city were, inescapably, representations of power.

There are no buildings of opposition because the architecture that is going to be realized is always an 31 expression of a dominant class.

fig 5.. RNDRD. (2018). Gian Ugo Polesello, Aldo Rossi, Luca Meda. Casabella 278 1963, 48. [online] Available at: http://rndrd.com/n/1331 [Accessed 11 Jun. 2018]. Aldo Rossi, Luca Meda, Gianugo Polesello, competition entry for centro direzion ale, Turin, 1962, Site Plan.

31. Aureli, P. (2013). The Project of Autonomy. p.68. Retreated directly within second paragraph.

The scheme presented for this competition was going to be the framework in which Rossi characterized his work with the austere and formal language in the name of a rationalist project in the following years. Rather than utilizing emergent and novel styles that could present an ideological integration to the developing technologies, Rossi favored for a rigid grammar of forms. These forms were not the expressions of a deep underlying meaning or the results of any political and economic process, but rather they were just themselves. This approach shifted attention to the theory of Locus as a symbolic and geographic singularity, an expression of exception, resulting in a challenge for the open-ended space of the capitalist city-territory. Aureli perfectly summarizes the analogy between the political autonomy and the autonomy in architecture proposed by Rossi;

Analogous to Tronti’s autonomy of the political, which was an inquiry directed not at the autonomy of one part of society with respect to another but at the autonomy of power itself, Rossi’s autonomy of architecture was above all about the establishment of urban concepts that posited the supremacy of politics 32 over the city’s accelerating economic development.

32. Aureli, P. (2013). The Project of Autonomy. p.69. Retreated directly from the first paragraph.

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figure 6. New Centro Direzionale, Torino axonometric

figure 7. New Centro Direzionale, Torino pyhsical model

Aldo Rossi, Luca Meda, and Gianugo Polesello, competition board for the Centro Direzionale, Turin, 1962. Axonometric. Against the techno-utopian character of many projects proposed for this competition, Rossi, Meda, and Polesello proposed a polemical approach in which the complexity of the program was reduced to a very simple form intended as “exceptional” within the city as analogous to Turin’s grid. The project is monumental in scale; however, its compact form was seen as a way to avoid the dispersion of administrative activities throughout the city.

fig 6.. RNDRD. (2018). Gian Ugo Polesello, Aldo Rossi, Luca Meda. Casabella 278 1963, 48. [online] Available at: http://rndrd.com/n/1333 [Accessed 11 Jun. 2018]. Aldo Rossi, Luca Meda, Gianugo Polesello, competition entry for centro direzion ale, Turin, 1962, Site Plan.

33. Aureli, P. (2013). The Project of Autonomy. p.68. Retreated from the descriptions within the “Illustrations” chapter.

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fig 7.. RNDRD. (2018). Gian Ugo Polesello, Aldo Rossi, Luca Meda. Casabella 278 1963, 48. [online] Available at: http://rndrd.com/n/1333 [Accessed 11 Jun. 2018]. Aldo Rossi, Luca Meda, Gianugo Polesello, competition entry for centro direzion ale, Turin, 1962, Site Plan.

To the deceptive attempts to give architecture an ideological dress, I shall always prefer the sincerity of those who have the courage to speak of that silent and outdated “purity”; even if this, too, still harbors an 35 ideological inspiration, pathetic in its anachronism.

INVENTION AND UTOPIA The effects of capitalist development with its highly innovative systems on the production of architectural theory and practice and especially on the evolution of cities cannot be overlooked. Aldo Rossi’s theories criticising the city-territory idea and producing a new schema that he defines as Locus presents an important framework for the comprehension of the autonomy idea in architecture. Probably the most prominent counterpart whose ideas can be compared to or discussed on the same basis that Rossi’s ideas are formed upon is Manfredo Tafuri. In his influential book named “Architecture and Utopia: Design and Capitalist Development”, he discusses the similar processes that led to the urban development theories in 1960’s and 1970’s, this time taking the entire course of architectural history as the most important guide on his journey. Tafuri’s ideas came into prominence later than Rossi and shared both similarities and huge discrepancies at the same time.

Stating his general view on architectural theory and criticism, Tafuri defended the idea that critical analysis of the simple principles of contemporary architectural ideology does not force itself to take a position in which it pretends to have a revolutionary aim. The point of interest according to Tafuri was to determine the exact identities which capitalist development has taken away from architecture, from the point of ideological configurations. According to Tafuri with this idea, any theorist can be drawn automatically into the discovery of the drama of architecture: namely, to see the field of architecture destined to return to the pure architectural language, to form the practice without any ideological overarching statement or any utopia, at the end leading to a 34 majestic uselessness.

Where Rossi’s and Tafuri’s ideas conflict can be understood as the sourcing strategy of architectural production. With his idea of Locus, Rossi values the individual appreciation of an architectural object without being confined to any totalizing image or strategy which constitutes the core idea of city-territory, Tafuri rejects going back to the purity of architectural language in favor of individuality, and states the necessity of an overarching statement, a utopia, an ideological framework that any other work can relate itself to. In his view, architecture is given with new tasks beyond its reach, which constitutes a regressive utopia causing the role of architecture to cease to exist and we can easily understand that by looking into the number of architecture graduates actually practicing the profession.

Tafuri also states that there are continuously recurring themes mentioned in the “Enlightenment Dialectic” on architecture, which makes the architects ideologists of societies; such as the individualization of the domains of intervention proper to city planning, the convincing role of form regarding the public and the self-critical role of form, regarding its own problems and development and the connection and opposition, between architectural object and 36 urban organization.

34. Tafuri, M. and La Penta, B. (1979). Architecture and Utopia.

1st ed. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, p. 9. The information and the interpretation of Tafuri is taken from the third paragraph of the preface page nine and directly reflected.

35. Tafuri, M. and La Penta, B. (1979). Architecture and Utopia. p. 9. The information is retreated directly from the third paragraph of the preface page 9.

36. Tafuri, M. and La Penta, B. (1979). Architecture and Utopia. p. 3. The information and the interpretation of Tafuri is taken from the fourth paragraph of page three and directly reflected.

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Historical references and the analysis of the works of prominent figures in history was also essential for Tafuri to be able to understand the true nature of the relationship between architectural production and urban development. Looking into the Enlightenment period, Tafuri was able to draw conclusions for his own theory: he stated that although the properly formal role of architecture had been placed in “parentheses” by the city, it still proposed an alternative to the nihilist outlook which is apparent in the hallucinating fantasies of Jean-Jacques Lequeu, François-Joseph Bélanger or Giovanni Battista Piranesi. According to Tafuri, by rejecting the symbolic role at least in the traditional sense, architecture discovered its own scientific vocation, to avoid from destroying itself. Tafuri states that, on the one hand, architecture could become the instrument of social equilibrium and on the other, it could become the 37 science of sensations.

From the excessive symbolism of Claude Nicolas Ledoux and Jean-Jacques Lequeu to the geometric silence of Jean-Nicolas-Louis Durand’s formally codified building types, the process followed by Enlightenment architecture is consistent with the new ideological role it had assumed. In order to become part of the structure of the bourgeois city, architecture had to redimension itself, dissolving into the 38 uniformity ensured by preconstituted formal systems.

Architecture might make the effort to maintain its completeness and preserve itself from total destruction, but such an effort is invalidated by the assemblage of architectural pieces in the city. It is in the city that these fragments are pitilessly absorbed and deprived of any autonomy, and this situation cannot be reversed by stubbornly forcing the fragments to assume articulated composite configu39 rations.

37.Tafuri, M. and La Penta, B. (1979). Architecture and Utopia. p.

11. The information and the interpretation of Tafuri is taken from the second paragraph of page eleven and directly reflected.

38. Tafuri, M. and La Penta, B. (1979). Architecture and Utopia. p. 13. The information is retreated directly from the second paragraph of page thirteen.

39. Tafuri, M. and La Penta, B. (1979). Architecture and Utopia. p. 14. The information is retreated directly from the fourth paragraph of page fourteen.

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The view of Tafuri in terms of autonomy in architecture, the manifestation of capitalist development and how all these theories are combined to answer the city-scale attributions is particularly hard to comprehend. However, the phrases above, especially the last part of the second paragraph summarizes it very well. Tafuri also approaches the city-territory idea in an objective manner and claims that it constitutes a precaution for architecture itself to be able to define a uniformity, and thus a sense of an identity, however, it does so by taking extra measures like redimensioning itself in order to cope with the realities of a bourgeois city. These precautions are, nevertheless, not consolidated because the fragments, the individual parts having their own identity, of the city when brought together does not constitute the expected meaning overall as they lack the required level of autonomy to do so in their own scale. Regardless, one could expect to achieve it by superficially attributing meaning to these fragments with the help of architectural articulation in order to reverse the process but Tafuri thinks that it never works. One of the analogies that can be made for these articulations would be ornamentation because obviously, many formal theories were developed just by the evolution of the formal constitution of individual building elements throughout the entire course of architectural history, but apparently that discussion, for now, is almost irrelevant as it does not propose any validation neither for the completeness of architecture and city, nor for 40 the fragmentations of these entities.

Furthermore, Tafuri discusses the work of Giovanni Battista Piranesi in order to substantiate his claims. In Campo Marzio, Tafuri talks about the epic representation of a battle waged by architecture against its own identity. The historically defined building types in Campo Marzio, is declared as an overarching and superior principle of order, however, the physical configuration of the individual building types tends to destroy the very concept of the historically

40. Tafuri, M. and La Penta, B. (1979). Architecture and Utopia. p. 15. The interpretation is done through reviewing Tafuri’s ideas on autonomy on the first and second paragraphs of the page.

developed language as a whole. According to Tafuri, Piranesi’s contradictory rejection of historical and archeological reality makes the civic potential of the total image very doubtful. Formal novelty, as Tafuri states, seems to declare its own supremacy, however, the obsessive reiteration of the inventions decreases the overall organism to a kind of an enormous “use41 less machine”.

In the case of Campo Marzio, rationality appears to reveal its own irrationality. To be able to eliminate its own contradictions, architectural “reasoning” applies the technic of shock to its very foundations and individual elements push one against the other however each of them seems indifferent to the push, and as an accumulation, they demonstrate the uselessness of the novel effort expanded on their formal definition.

The archeological appearance of Campo Marzio appears to be misleading however it is an experimental design effort and the remainder of the city is therefore unknown. By Tafuri, Campo Marzio is defined as a tremendous piece of bricolage and it reveals a self-evident truth that rationality and irrationality are no longer cooperatively exclusive.

Tafuri believes that Piranesi did not have the means to 42 translate the dynamic interactions into form. Piranesi proposed that new problem would be the equilibrium of opposites, mainly the struggle between architecture and the city, between the demand for order and the tendency to formlessness which is epically discovered in Campo Marzio.

Although Tafuri’s criticism of Campo Marzio remains valid, we cannot overlook the fact that Rossi’s idea of autonomy and Piranesi’s depictions in Campo Marzio shares a common ground for discus-

sion. Rossi’s idea of autonomy is derived from the resistance to the totalizing image of a city-territoryidea and favors for the autonomy of individual parts, as in his theory each case appears to be shaped formally and ideologically buy its own specific individual parameters. These are the driving forces of design and determined by many external factors but the architect’s will to create his own theory and shape the built environment accordingly remains crucial to the process as well. In this sense, Tafuri’s theories share an important similarity. Tafuri thinks that an overarching statement and the desired uniformity in the development of an urban area, similar to the totalizing image idea of Rossi, can be understood as measures taken to meet the realities of a bourgeois city, however, the fragments of a particular urban environment, if not given the required level of autonomy in their production and design, fails to constitute an overall meaning as a city, when brought together. At this point, the bricolage of Piranesi strikes as a significant case study in terms of this relationship between fragments and the overall entity of a city. In Campo Marzio the fragments are regulated by a superior order, an architectural language determined by the formal invention of historical building types. They have an overarching statement inherent in their design and production, although this superior order appears to be a formal novelty, an invention that is in search of an experiment. However, the result is not as expected. This inherent historical language and order, that deprives each fragment of its formal autonomy, although intended to be something novel, dominates the total image. Obsessive repetition of this so-called formal invention also eases the process according to Tafuri.

The fragments do not constitute a meaningful entity when brought together as a schema of urban development, as it was feared and criticised by Rossi.

Campo Marzio is, in this context, remains as a crucial experiment unfolding the debate of city-territory and autonomy in a visual sense.

41. Tafuri, M. and La Penta, B. (1979). Architecture and Utopia. p.

15. The information is retreated directly from the first paragraph of page fifteen and reflects Tafuri’s direct view.

42. Tafuri, M. and La Penta, B. (1979). Architecture and Utopia. p. 15. The interpretation of Tafuri is retreated from the third paragraph of page fifteen.

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figure 8. Il Campo Marzio dell’antica Roma, Piranesi, 1762,

fig 8.. B03.deliver.odai.yale.edu. (2018). [online] Available at: http://b03.deliver.odai.yale.edu/60/dc/60dcf510-66fc-4148-9279-3c9388b411a5/ag-obj-177974-002-pub-large.jpg [Accessed 13 Jun. 2018].

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figure 10. The Ideal City of Chaux, Ledoux, 1773

figure 9. Orthography of the tomb of Porsenna King of Etruria, called the labyrinth of Tuscany, Lequeu 1792.

Jean-Jacques Leque was a draughtsman and an architect and his work is considered part of the period of “visionary architecture� which developed in the period leading up to French Revolution. His work, as in this example, depicts a utopian understanding to shape the architectural product. In his drawings, the autonomy and self-proclaimed existence of the architectural object are examined.

fig 9.. Pruned.blogspot.com. (2018). The Enigmatic Jean-Jacques Lequeu. [online] Available at: http://pruned.blogspot.com/2005/10/enigmatic-jean-jacques-lequeu.html [Accessed 13 Jun. 2018].

Claude-Nicolas Ledoux was one of the earliest exponents of French Neoclassical architecture. He uses his knowledge in architectural theory to design not only domestic architecture but also town planning.

As a consequence of his visionary plan for the Ideal City of Chaux, he became known as a utopian. The formal autonomy, given to the fragments of this urban development, although not as freely, presents a significant case study for the relationship between the fragments and the overall entity of a city.

fig 10.. Norton, D. (2018). Imagined Architecture. [online] At Home & Afield. Available at: https://michaelgimberblog.com/2017/03/10/imagined-architecture/ [Accessed 13 Jun. 2018].

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fig 11.

fig 12. The Ideal City of Chaux, Ledoux, 1773

fig 11., 12.. fabrizi, m. (2018). The Ideal City of Chaux by Claude-Nicolas Ledoux (1773-1806). [online] SOCKS. Available at: http://socks-studio.com/2016/11/09/the-ideal-city-of-chaux-by-claude-nicolas-ledoux-1773-1806/ [Accessed 14 Jun. 2018].

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FRAGMENT AND HISTORY After the scrutiny of political and architectural autonomy and their origins in history in 1960’s in the context of Italy with the advancing capitalist development, more architects adopted the notion of autonomous architecture and tried to research and discover to come up with new theories, new meanings and research lines, sometimes resulting in personal approaches as well. The autonomy principle started to proliferate and attracted attention from both the newcomers and the old school theoreticians of architectural discourse. The exchange and discussion between two influential figures at that time, Colin Rowe, and Peter Eisenman, in terms of their interpretation of autonomy and the city opens up another ground for any architect or academician, to be able to locate himself in the evolution of autonomy idea, in postmodern period. In the book named “From Formalism to Weak Form”, Stefano Corbo sheds light on the debate.

In 1978, Colin Rowe presented his work “Collage City”, a critique of modern architecture, particularly opposing the Marxist view and desire for a better world, translated into the modern architectures and defended his liberal and ironic position in favor of the “fragment” as the structuring basis of the city. The objective of the collage approach deployed in the research was the entertainment of utopian 43 poetics aiming to unfold utopian politics. With the logic of fragment in mind, he extracted images and contents and reused them to accomplish a reality of change. The interest in Piranesi and his work pushed

43. Corbo, S. (2014). From Formalism to Weak Form. 1st ed.

London: Ashgate Publishing Limited, p.18. The information is retreated from the second paragraph.

Rowe to create Collage City, in which he selected precedent elements and inserted them into Piranesi’s Campo Marzio. According to Corbo the concept was to declare the continuity of history by proposing a linear interaction between an originating ground and 44 novel, different objects. Rowe also aimed to show how any urban project must be a set of fragments whose value is pervaded with history. Similar to Piranesi who tried to employ a historical statement to achieve a formal invention, Rowe also used history to mark an ideological discontinuity with his contemporary discourse. Rowe’s polemical attack on modernism, using the context of seventeenth-century Rome and the collision of different objects such as palaces, piazzas, villas and so on, resulted in the conditions of “inter-dependence”, “independence” and “multiple interpretability” and led to a heterogeneity which conflicted the modern dogmatism which was based 45 on total design and social engineering. In this sense, the totalizing approaches of modern dogmatism with its Marxist background are similar to the processes of capitalist development, which was articulated architecturally in the city-territory theory with its totalizing singular image of the urban development. Aldo Rossi’s theory of Locus and Colin Rowe’s collage city are in accordance with each other at this point, in terms of the autonomy of individual parts of the city being analogous to the desired heterogeneity of fragments.

The Collage City also influenced another project by Colin Rowe, Roma Interrota, and it was based on the idea of coexistence of different fragments within a larger framework in the city. The influence this time was Giambattista Nolli’s iconographic plan of Rome. Rowe borrowed from the concept of separation of traditional instruments from the public space, he perceived fragmentation as a compositional instrument. However, this approach shifted Rowe’s

44. Corbo, S. (2014). From Formalism to Weak Form. p.18. The information interpreted in the sentence is retreated from the third paragraph.

45. Corbo, S. (2014). From Formalism to Weak Form. p.18. The definitions and the information is retreated driectly from the fourth paragraph.

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interest and research towards public and private, solid and void, mass and space. The properties of urban space and development in this approach is defined by the balance between the figure and ground relationships. Eisenman, on the other hand, was interested in the transformative schema that Piranesi proposed.

Nolli’s plan was an image of architectural fundamentalism based on the scientific and objective depiction of the reality, however Piranesi’s Campo Marzio was a framework for transformation because he used the Rome of the seventeenth century as a starting point in which he inserted his own vision, adding to the existing context many fictional constructions from 46 the Roman Empire. It would not fit as a real city, there were no streets, just interstitial spaces in between the buildings. There were also no clear boundaries between the figure and ground, open and closed spaces were interwoven because the utopian city appeared as an accumulation of different fragments. In this sense it was the opposite of Nolli’s plan, it was structured as a superimposition of real and fictional elements. Eisenman is associated with Piranesi as he perceives the city with regard to “fragmen47 tation”, “alienation” and “discontinuity”. Although both Piranesi and Nolli worked with the fragments, Nolli’s approach was reduced to the dichotomy of figure and ground, in Piranesi’s approach there was no reconciliation. Campo Marzio was a bricolage into which Piranesi inserted all his formal inventions.

Corbo further elaborates on the discussion with the views of Tafuri on the matter; For Manfredo Tafuri, Piranesi aimed to test the city’s capacity to absorb these fragments and to provide them with some mediating framework. Architecture could survive the loss of the city with every object manifesting its own autonomy without compromising that of another. To some extent, one may say that Piranesi tested the limits of architecture

46. Corbo, S. (2014). From Formalism to Weak Form. p.19. The interpretation is retreated from the third paragraph.

47. Corbo, S. (2014). From Formalism to Weak Form. p.18. The definitions in the sentence retreated from the third paragraph and the information interpreted in the entire paragraph retreated from the same page.

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in the same way that Eisenman attempted to do in his Houses. The American architect was looking for those internal codes that can transform architecture, apart from functional and aesthetic predeterminations. So Eisenman and Piranesi shared the idea that the city is a fragmented palimpsest from which absolute objects 48 emerge.

Nolli’s plan was the first scientific effort to link the urban structure of a city to its economic and social organization. Pier Vittorio Aureli afterward proposed a new interpretation that overcame the traditional thought of a separation between private and public spaces. According to Aureli, Nolli’s plan depicted the differences between the figure of architecture and the ground of urban space, namely, the architectural forms were separated by the fabric of 49 the city.

Ideological separation of architecture from the city and the cohesion of architecture are the immediate result of the differentiation between the figure and ground employed in Nolli’s plan. The architectural objects are finite forms and small fragments within the city. According to Corbo, Eisenman discovered the fragmented and the discontinuous character of architecture, whereas in Nolli’s plan he became aware of its autonomy. Corbo states that for an architect like Eisenman who never took into account the external factors derived from the city as decisive elements in the practice of his architecture, Nolli, and Piranesi despite their radical differences, represented unexpected but relevant precedents.

The distinction between Aureli’s and Eisenman’s autonomy comes from the following; for the former, autonomy is rationalized by history, and for the latter, it is rationalized by the elaboration of a self-sufficient 50 language.

48. Corbo, S. (2014). From Formalism to Weak Form. p.19. The paragraph is retreated directly from the third paragraph.

49. Corbo, S. (2014). From Formalism to Weak Form. p.20. The interpreted information is retreated directly from the fifth paragraph.

50. Corbo, S. (2014). From Formalism to Weak Form. p.19. The conclusion is interpreted form the information provided the sixth paragraph.

figure 13. La Nuova Topografia di Roma, Nolli, 1748

figure 14. Campo Marzio dell’antica Roma, Piranesi, 1762

fig 13.. Vm136.lib.berkeley.edu. (2018). Nolli, Giambattista, Map of Rome, 1748-Earth Sciences & Map Library-University of California, Berkeley. [online] Available at: http://vm136.lib.berkeley.edu/EART/maps/nolli.html [Accessed 14 Jun. 2018]. fig 14.. AMPO. (2018). Gabriele Mastrigli.Il Campo Marzio dell'antica Roma - CAMPO. [online] Available at: http://www.campo.space/gabriele-mastrigli-il-campo-marzio-dellantica-roma/ [Accessed 15 Jun. 2018].

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PROLOGUE The so-called “contextual approach” is claimed and adopted by many practices in the contemporary period. The set of attitudes concentrated around a design method that critically analyzes the pre-existing conditions and the history of a site in terms of social, cultural and political contexts can be defined as a contextual approach, however, in the contemporary discourse, these attitudes are generally reduced to a set of criteria in the process of application. The importance given to notions as scale, materiality, proportionality and etc. constitute these criteria and are extremely valuable, however, contextualism holds a deeper meaning and a set of values that needs profound scrutiny and a considerable amount of research. In order to achieve a prolific theory for a better understanding and practice of contextualism, its origins have to be rediscovered and reclassified with respect to many impactful events that affected its evolution through the course of architectural history. This chapter aims to discuss the theoretical origin, in this sense, Critical Regionalism, in order to redefine the discourse in a manner that is freed from the unsophisticated label of “sensitive architecture”.

Rooted from the overarching statement of Regionalism that has significantly affected the architectural discourse for the last few centuries, Critical Regionalism presents a novel framework for the collaboration of “universal civilization” and “world culture”. Kenneth Frampton’s prolific essay, “Towards a Critical Regionalism, constitute the focal point of the chapter. The processes of universalization, the notion of single word civilization and the theory of capitalist production, all presenting a totalizing ideological scheme dominant all around the world in the processes of urbanization, are critically analyzed. .25

With capitalist development and the applications of new technologies, the values of universal civilization prevails over the values of locally defined cultures.

Critical Regionalism theory puts forward an understanding that arrives at compromises, trying to incorporate different approaches, which is realistic considering the rate of universalization.

The discussion continues with the evolution of Avant-garde approach, which can be classified in two stages as historical and progressive avant-garde.

The processes leading to modernity has to be analyzed in order to understand the role of progressive Avant-garde in the process of universalization as the liberating modern project devalued the approach of Regionalism during that period. Frampton at this point proposes an arriére-garde mentality that architecture has to claim if it is ever to produce resistant practice in which architectural discourse distances itself both from the myth of progress and the tendency to return to the pre-industrial forms and applications.

To exemplify what Critical Regionalism could be in a realistic sense, the Bagsværd Church designed

by Jørn Utzon is taken as a case study. One can easily see the traces of the terms coined by Frampton, ”universal civilization” and “world culture” in the project.

The Megalopolis concept by Jean Gottman is further discussed to be able to understand the effects of universal civilization in the realm of urbanization and its close relationship with the concepts of typology and place. The theories of the German philosopher Heidegger here proposes an important argument in terms of the comprehension of the idea of space in a strict phenomenological sense. Combining the theories of Frampton and Heidegger, the scope for the creation of an architecture of resistance suddenly emerges. The concept of “universal placelessness” is further discussed as a result of the processes of universal civilization and with respect to the advent of a new place-form theory and strategy.

The idea of Tabula Rasa which takes no precedent analysis as a reference for production and assumes an empty plot with no further background is discussed and criticised by Frampton because he considers it as a repercussion of modernism. The essential consideration given to an existing topography, local light conditions, local tectonic qualities and to the realities of climatology is presented as the core principle of Critical Regionalism against the notion of Tabula Rasa.

The formation of an exhibition space in a universal context, considering the placelessness of the exhibited object is further discussed. The last topic in the research is allocated for the tactile experiences of architectural material and space as the traditional perspectival experience in the critical analysis of an architectural body no longer constitutes adequate criteria.

criticisms are made throughout the chapter, however, the impact of both Frampton’s and Moore’s theories are handled in the overall conclusion in the formation of a new theory. Although the works of Critically regionalist architects have overwhelmingly been associated with other topics for the last few decades, the framework to produce a theory which acts as a catalytic emulsion to incorporate the “universal civilization” and “world culture” concepts in the formation of a new architectural practice remains valid.

The next stage of the chapter is centered around the non-modern thesis presented by Steven A. Moore. Frampton’s perception of Critical Regionalism is also widely discussed throughout the essay of Moore taking into account again the notions of place and technology in the context of modernism and postmodernism. Critical Regionalism rejects the idea of classification however Moore starts with his definitions of place and technology. The role that Marxism played on the perception of local communities and national societies which can be perceived as analogous to the local culture and universal civilization dilemma is further discussed. Five ideological stages for the realization of a Critically Regionalist architecture is further presented with reference given to the theories of Alexander Tzonis and Liane Lefaivre. As a conclusion, an approach named “regenerative architecture” is further favored and elaborated by Moore with respect to many classifications made in the modern and postmodern period.

The chapter is overall organized in an informative manner to be able to better understand many classifications that existed and evolved before the single overarching concept of “contextualism” in the practice of architecture. Interpretations and

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Ricoeur believes that this menace is expressed along with the other worrying effects by the expansion of an unhealthy civilization of a mediocre value and he further elaborates his theory with the following examples;

CRITICAL REGIONALISM With the advent of postmodern period, the processes of capitalist development, with the high innovation and rapid technological development that it brings was well analyzed and criticized. The postmodern tendency to reflect the importance and relevance of historical reference resulted in theories that centered its research around the local values of architectural design and production. Critical Regionalism theories came after a prolific debate and were born out of a resistance to the implications of technological development on the architectural design and production.

One of the ideas introduced in line with the Critical Regionalism theory was Kenneth Frampton’s influential essay published as part of Hal Foster’s book, “The Anti-aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture”. In the Article, Frampton reflects his theories about the effects of globalization starting with the ideas of a historian Paul Ricoeur. The experience of universalization constantly creates a culture of destruction despite the privileges and the advancement that it brings to the mankind and brings an extinction to the traditional cultures according to Ricoeur. These traditional cultures often constitute the ethical and mythical nucleus of the mankind on which we base the interpretation of life and thus the creative nucleus that mankind uses to respond to its environment. The extreme globalization we’re headed towards creates a single world civilization in which we feel the wearing away of the traditional cultures and localities that actually brought mankind until this 51 point in the process of evolution.

51. Frampton, K. (1983). ‘Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance’ in Foster, H. (ed.) The Anti-aesthetic. 1st ed. Seattle: Bay Press, pp. 16-31.

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Everywhere through the world, one finds the same bad movie, the same slot machines, the same plastic or aluminum atrocities, the same twisting of language by propaganda, etc. It seems as if mankind, by approaching, en masse, a basic consumer culture, were also stopped, en masse, at a subcultural level.

Thus we come to the crucial problem confronting nations just rising from underdevelopment. In order to get on the road toward modernization, it is necessary to jettison the old cultural past which has been the raison d’étre of a nation?... Whence the paradox: on the one hand, it has to root itself in the soil of its past, forge a national spirit, and unfurl this spiritual and cultural revindication before the colonialist’s personality. But in order to take part in the modern civilization, it is necessary at the same time to take part in scientific, technical and political rationality, something which very often requires the pure and simple abandon of a whole cultural past. It is a fact: every culture cannot sustain and absorb the shock of modern civilization. There is the paradox: how to become modern and to return to sources: how to revive an old, dormant civilization and take part in 52 modern civilization.

While laying out his theory, Frampton firstly states the conditions which architecture and urban design find themselves in. According to Frampton, modern building was so universally conditioned by the optimized technology that the possibility of creating 53 significant urban form had become extremely limited.

52. Ricoeur, P. and Rasmussen, D. (2007). History and truth.

Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, pp.276-277.

Quotation retreated directly and the source found from the endnotes of Kenneth Frampton.

53. Frampton, K. (1983). ‘Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance’ in Foster, H. (ed.)

Substantiating his theory, Frampton further expresses the effects of several factors such as the manipulation of elements limited by the imperatives of production and building construction, the artificial masking caused by the modern development’s dependency on marketing and the preservation of social control, all of which is the direct limitation of land speculation. According to Frampton, architectural production is increasingly polarized between the high-tech approach depending largely on production and a misleading facade utilized to conceal the severe 54 realities of the universal system.

Up to 1960’s the dialectical relationship between the developing civilization and the traditional cultures maintained the possibility to have a control over the form and the meaning of the urban fabric.

However, with the tremendous increase in the capitalist development and the applications of new technologies, metropolitan centers of the world had been radically transformed. The high-rise buildings and freeways introduced to the urban fabric overlaid the previous knowledge which was still essentially being used in the city fabrics. The former was conceived as a solution to the increased land value. The typical downtown showing a fabric that is a mixture of residential and industrial buildings had become an office landscape, so to speak, a process which can be explained as the victory of universal civilization over locally defined cultures.

According to Frampton, ever since the beginning of enlightenment, the civilization has been primarily concerned with the instrumental reason while the culture has addressed itself to the specifics of expression, namely to the creation of the sense of “being” and the evolution of its “psycho-social reality”. Frampton criticizes the current condition of civilization which tends to be increasingly involved in a 55 vicious circle of “means and ends”.

54. Frampton, K. (1983). ‘Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance’ in Foster, H. (ed.)

55. Frampton, K. (1983). ‘Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance’ in Foster, H. (ed.) The words in brackets retreated directly reflect Frampton’s view.

The modernization idea, with its social, political and architectural attributes in its broadest sense is a means in which new meanings are implemented through rationality, human reasoning and self-referential systems of thoughts. One can easily understand what modernization is after for in an architectural sense by simply looking at the revolutionary spirit to change the precedent in a technocratic way with regards to a social and political agenda which is absolutely the opposite of postmodern approach in which historical references are taken as focal points.

Frampton further into his research analyzes the avant-garde as he sees it inseparable from modernization because it takes a liberating and progressive attitude along the process. The universal civilization, to which critical regionalism makes an argument against, was propagated in the 18th century by neoclassicism. However afterward, historical avant-garde takes an adversary stance both against the industrial process and Neo-classical form. Frampton classifies this attitude as a reaction on the part of “tradition” to the process of modernization, however, despite this 56 critique, modernization goes on persistently.

The progressive avant-garde, on the other hand, emerges in the 1920’s with the advent of futurism and as a critique to the ancient regime in the form as positive cultural formations such as Purism, Neo-plasticism, and Constructivism. These movements are considered as the last attempts at avant-garde thinking to identify itself with modernization. Frampton states that after World War I, the level that science, medicine, and industry had achieved appeared to confirm the liberating prospect 57 of the modern project. However, after 1930’s, the problems and insecurity that newly urbanized masses faced such as disruptions caused by war, economic depression, followed by a sudden necessity for psycho-social stability in a time of political and eco-

56,57. Frampton, K. (1983). ‘Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance’ in Foster, H. (ed.) p.

18. The information are retreated directly from second paragraph.

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nomic crises resulted in an indifference for monopoly and state-capitalism against the liberating drives of cultural modernization.

One reaction to this indifference, according to Frampton, was the reassertion of Neo-Kantian aesthetics as a replacement for the culturally liberating modern project. The advocates of socio-cultural modernization recommended a strategic retreat from the project of entirely transforming the existing reality. The protagonists of this approach defended the idea that as long as the struggle between socialism and capitalism existed, the modern world could not introduce the prospect of a “marginal”, “liberating”, avant-gardist culture which could break the 58 history of bourgeois suppression.

Despite this defense, the realm of art and architecture headed to commodity, towards the pure technique and scenography of Postmodern Architecture. Frampton thinks that postmodern architects were merely feeding the media society with unjustified images, rather than creative ones after the collapse of liberating modern project. Frampton makes a quotation from Andreas Huyssens to summarize the situation; The American Post-modernist Avant-garde, therefore, is not only the end game of avant-gardism. It also represents the fragmentation and 59 decline of critical adversary culture.

However, Frampton accepts that modernization can no longer be identified simplistically as liberating because of the supremacy of media-industry over mass culture and he makes the conclusion that

58. Frampton, K. (1983). ‘Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance’ in Foster, H. (ed.) p.

19. The words in brackets reflect Frampton’s view.

59. Frampton, K. (1983). ‘Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance’ in Foster, H. (ed.) The Anti-aesthetic. 1st ed. Seattle: Bay Press, pp. 16-31. Kenneth Frampton states the source of the quotation as the following; Andreas Huyssens, “The search for Tradition: Avant-Garde and Postmodernism in the 1970’s”, New German Critique 22 (Winter 1981), p. 34.

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therefore, avant-gardism can also no longer besustained as a liberating movement because the initial utopian promise is overridden by the internal ration60 ality of instrumentality. The following phrase that Frampton mentions belonging to Herbert Marcuse, concludes the topic; The technological apriori is a political apriori inasmuch as the transformation of nature involves that of man, and inasmuch as the “man-made creations” issue from and re-enter the societal ensemble. One may still insist that the machinery of the technological universe is “as such” indifferent towards political ends, it can revolutionize and retard society. However when techniques become the universal form of material production, it circumscribes an entire culture, it projects a historical totality, a 61 “world”.

Further, into his research, Frampton elaborates on a position which he calls as arriére-garde that has to be assumed by architecture if it is to be 62 sustained as a critical practice. In this position, any attempt to produce architecture should be equally distanced from both the enlightenment myth of progress and from a reactionary, impractical instinct to return to the architectonic forms of the pre-industrial past. It is an approach in which architecture removes itself from both the optimization of advanced technology and the ever-present tendency to regress into nostalgic historicism. Frampton believes that only arriére-garde has the ability to cultivate a resistant, identity-giving culture whereas at the same time having a discreet alternative to the universal technique.

60. Frampton, K. (1983). ‘Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance’ in Foster, H. (ed.) p.

19. The comment is Frampton’s direct view.

61. Frampton, K. (1983). ‘Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance’ in Foster, H. (ed.) The Anti-aesthetic. 1st ed. Seattle: Bay Press, pp. 16-31. Kenneth Frampton states the source of the quotation as the following; Herbert Marcuse, One Dimensional Man Boston: Beacon Press, 1964), p. 156.

62. Frampton, K. (1983). ‘Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance’ in Foster, H. (ed.) The arriére-garde constitutes the origins of critical regionalism.

However, Frampton attempts to separate this approach from its conservative associate policies as Populism and “Sentimental Regionalism” and decreases its critical scope. The term “Critical Regionalism” is introduced, which is originally coined

by Alex Tzonis and Liliane Lefaivre in their critical essay “The Grid and the Pathway”. The duo talks about the state of architecture having been dominated by regionalism during the past few centuries. In their definition, the notion of regionalism favors the local and individual architectonic properties against universally acclaimed and abstract ones, however, it is ambiguous by nature. The regionalism theory, on the one hand, is related to campaigns of reform and liberation, and on the other, it has been used as a powerful tool for suppression. Tzonis and Lefaivre admit the limitations of critical regionalism, however, persistently defend the idea that in order for architecture to be novel, it has to form new kinds of relationships between the designer and the user. Despite the limitations, Tzonis and Lefaivre see Critical Regionalism as a bridge and claim that any humanistic archi63 tecture of the future must pass over.

The elemental strategy of Critical Regionalism is to arrive at a compromise between the effects of universal civilization and the traces derived incidentally from the idiosyncrasies of a particular space. Critical Regionalism is obligated to maintain a certain level of self-consciousness and may find its inspiration to operate in particular concepts such as the quality of the local light, in the tectonic obtained from a structural peculiarity or in the topography of a site. However, Frampton believes it is necessary to make the distinction between Critical Regionalism and the unsophisticated attempts to revitalize the forms of a lost vernacular. In Frampton’s view, it has to be freed from the populist tendency to experience

63. Frampton, K. (1983). ‘Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance’ in Foster, H. (ed.) The Anti-aesthetic. 1st ed. Seattle: Bay Press, pp. 16-31. Kenneth Frampton states the source of his interpretations as the following; Alex Tzonis and Lilian Lefaivre, “The Grid and the Pathway.

An Introduction to the work of Dimitris and Susana Antonakakis”, Architecture in Greece, 15 (Athens: 1981), p. 178.

things through the direct supply of information, and rather seek to evoke a critical perception of any reality. Provided that it remedies its weak points, Frampton believes that Critical Regionalism can be formed as a cultural strategy reflecting the qualities of a 64 “world culture” rather than a “universal civilization”.

It is evident that we have to be aware of the interaction between the two. In this context, Critical Regionalism also has to deconstruct the overall spectrum of the world culture which it inherits inevitably and has to manifest a critical view of universal civilization. The elimination of eclecticism that favors for strange, exotic forms in the name of reviving an exhausted culture and the limitation on the optimization of industrial and post-industrial technology which is derived from universal technique, are the essentials of a success if Critical Regionalism is to be achieved in its full meaning.

Frampton, further into his research presents a case study, Jørn Utzon’s Bagsværd Church built near Copenhagen in 1976 to illustrate, in his own words, the achievement of a self-conscious synthesis between universal civilization and world culture. The church has a complex meaning which is derived directly from the acknowledged conjunction between the rationality of normative methodology and irrationality of an idiosyncratic form. Frampton describes the building as organized around a regular grid and consists of repetitive in-fill modules, at first glance identifiable as concrete blocks, and in the second, as precast concrete wall units. It is justifiable to consider it as the outcome of universal civilization.

The application, a cast in-situ concrete frame with prefabricated concrete in-fill elements, which can be considered as a gift from technological development, has been overwhelmingly used all over in building constructions of the developed world.

However, Frampton states that the universality of this production method, also including the patent

64. Frampton, K. (1983). ‘Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance’ in Foster, H. (ed.) The words in brackets constitute the two opposites of Frampton’s theory and are directly used by him.

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glazing on the roof application is suddenly mediated when we pass from the optimal modular skin of the exterior to the far less optimal reinforced concrete shell vault spanning of the nave. The interior achievement of the building can be deemed as a relatively uneconomic mode of construction. However, this method is selected, firstly, to emphasize a direct association with its capacity; the sacred space articulated phenomenologically by the idiosyncratic shape of the vault and secondly to signify the multiple cross-cultural references of the vault application.

Frampton believes that whereas the shell vault made out of reinforced concrete has long held a well-known place within the received tectonic canons of Western modern architecture, the articulation and the high technique applied in the configuration of the section is not familiar and the only reference and precedence for this sort of a form is not Western but Eastern, especially in terms of a sacred context. The example given by Frampton is the Chinese pagoda roof also cited by Jørn Utzon in his essay named “Platforms and Plateaus”. Frampton summarizes his view of Critical Regionalism in this case study with the following;

figure 15. Bagsværd Church, Copenhagen, Jørn Utzon, 1976

Although the main Bagsværd vault spontaneously signifies its religious nature, it does so in such a way as to preclude an exclusively Occidental or Oriental reading of the code by which the public and sacred space are constituted. The intent of this expression is, of course, to secularize the sacred form by precluding the usual set of semantic religious references and thereby the corresponding range of automatic responses that usually accompany them. This is arguably a more appropriate way of rendering a church in a highly secular age, where any symbolic allusion to the ecclesiastic usually degenerates immediately into the vagaries of kitsch. And yet paradoxically, this desacralization at Bagsvaerd subtly reconstitutes a renewed basis for the spiritual, one founded, I would argue, in a regional reaffirmation grounds, at 65 least, for some form of collective spirituality.

65. Frampton, K. (1983). ‘Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance’ in Foster, H. (ed.) p.

23.

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fig 15.. Pinterest. (2018). Diplom. [online] Available at: https://tr.pinterest.com/pin/562950022165468122/ [Accessed 18 Jun. 2018].

The Bagsværd Church by Jørn Utzon was completed in 1976. Though not his most famous work, the church is an example of the architect’s inventive work at a different scale. Utzon designed the church with an unassuming exterior that merely hints at the stirring forms he created inside. The Bagsværd Church was Utzon’s first work after returning to Denmark from Austrailia and the Sydney Opera House, which he designed. It is located on the northern outskirts of Copenhagen in a suburban setting. The church stands almost unassuming as a simple, modern structure amidst birch trees, with its back to a local street. It is with knowledge of the interior that the exterior becomes more intriguing. The orthogonal form is clad in white precast concrete panels and glazed white tiles attached to a frame. Utzon positioned the reflective glazed tiles to relate to the celebrated sinuous concrete curves occurring in the interior sanctuary.

Early sketches suggest rolling clouds were the inspiration for the interior of the Bagsværd Church. Utzon designed soft curves to control the light, and act as a visual masterpiece in this small church. White concrete was molded in place to create the interior sanctuary’s ceiling, where the curves rise from their lowest point above the congregation to their highest point above the altar. The exterior of the Bagsværd Church is much more austere than the views from within, where white concrete is complemented by pale beach wood. The curving white concrete overhead is

figure 16. Bagsværd Church, Copenhagen, Jørn Utzon, 1976 matched with white concrete walls, and floor tiles, as well as a delicate white screen of triangles behind the altar. The freestanding pews are constructed out of wood, and another screen isolates the sanctuary from the rest of the building through pale vertical wood pieces. Utzon carefully considered daylight in the Bagsværd Church. It is brought in at the highest point of the curving ceiling and softened along the curves. It is also filtered in through glass ceilings above corridors and hallways of the Bagsværd Church. Elsewhere, the church has an aluminum roof. The Bagsværd community had not had a church since the 16th century prior to Utzon’s timeless design, and his resulting building has certainly left its mark. The plain exterior contrasts an incredible sanctuary space that encourages a calm feeling for parishioners. The building holds extreme merit as a whole, but it is the interior section by Utzon 66 that has been world renowned since its completion.

fig 16., 66. ArchDaily. (2018). AD Classics: Bagsværd Church / Jørn Utzon. [online] Available at: https://www.archdaily.com/160390/ad-classics-bagsvaerd-church-jorn-utzon [Accessed 18 Jun. 2018]. The Informative text is retreated directly and reflects the view of Igor Fracalossi.

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figure 17. Bagsværd Church, Copenhagen, Jørn Utzon, 1976

fig 17.. ArchDaily. (2018). AD Classics: Bagsværd Church / Jørn Utzon. [online] Available at: https:// www.archdaily.com/160390/ad-classics-bagsvaerd-church-jorn-utzon [Accessed 18 Jun. 2018].

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In the later stage of his research, Frampton reflects his views on the evolution of urban design and how we lose our habits of creating urban form. The Megalopolis concept, presented by the geographer Jean Gottman, is basically the accumulation of urban areas in proximity to each other. Distinctly defined and planned urban areas come together and form a line of a huge metropolitan area which does not have any meaning other than the proximity and only linked together by the existence of several networks between the cities. Frampton blames the methodology of urban design, which he sees as in a state of crisis, to be reducing its virtue to the allocation of land 67 use and the logistics of distribution. This situation creates a condition of “universal placelessness” because of the effects of megalopolis concept, an idea which is the direct result of modernization and capitalist development, also presented by the German philosopher Martin Heidegger in his essay “Building, Dwelling, Thinking”. In contrast to the ancient abstract concept of space as an infinite continuum of evenly subdivided spatial components and integers, what he defines as “spatium” and “extensio”, Heidegger opposes the German word for space, in this context we can also call as “place”, which is 68 defined as “Raum” in German. Frampton elaborates on Heidegger's discussion that the phenomenological essence of such a space/place depends heavily on concrete definitions and clearly defined boundaries out of which something begins to exist and claims that only this kind of bounded domains can create the architecture of resistance, especially after the confrontation with the universal placelessness. Therefore, we can create with these clearly defined boundaries of spatial understanding the ultimate institutional stance against the processal flux of the Megalopolis. We can deduce from Frampton’s interest on Heidegger that the existence of a place-form theory and strategy was essential, according to Frampton, to the critical practice of architecture as well as the institutional presence of a clearly defined domain.

67, 68. Frampton, K. (1983). ‘Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance’ in Foster, H. (ed.) p. 24. Terms in brackets are directly retreated.

The research into the place-form theory, with the reference of Heidegger, directs the overall discussion of Critical Regionalism to the specifics of contextual understanding and practice in architecture. Frampton furthermore analyzes the relationship between universal civilization and world culture with respect to their handling of the natural phenomena.

In this context, Critical Regionalism is believed to have a more direct dialectical relation with nature than the avant-garde style that has more abstract and formal traditions because the inclination is towards a tabula rasa approach of modernization in which no precedence exist especially when the rationalization of construction occurs. It favors the optimum use of earth-moving equipment and an absolute flat datum as this approach is seen as the most economical one to build upon. We witness here again the tension and conflict between universal civilization and indigenous culture. The flattening of an irregular topography is plainly a technocratic gesture and facilitates an absolute placelessness whereas the terracing of the same site to receive the stepped form of a building constitutes an attempt to 69 cultivate the site according to Frampton.

With such an approach that can be classified in its practical terms as “building the site”, the particular culture of the region and its history both in a geological and agricultural sense becomes inscribed into the form and the realization of the work in Frampton’s view. This, so to speak, engraving, which is the direct result of embedding the building into the site, has a lot of potential and significance, in that, it has the ability to encapsulate the prehistory and the archeological past of the place in a built form and to promote its prospective cultivation and possible transformation across the time. By means of this layering into the site, the place finds a medium to express its idiosyncracies without having any trouble of falling into sentimentality.

69. Frampton, K. (1983). ‘Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance’ in Foster, H. (ed.) p.

25. Terms such as “universal civilization” and “world culture” are retreated directly from Frampton’s view.

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Frampton defends the idea that the case he discusses in terms of topography also similarly applies for the formation of urban fabric and can be discussed furthermore in the area of climatology and 70 local light qualities. However, the opposition for the optimum use of universal technique should be furthermore continued to keep the sensitivity in the modulation and incorporation of such aspects.

Frampton sees the generic window as the most delicate and crucial point in terms of climate and light control as the conjunction of these two natural forces on the fenestration of the building produces another engraving having an inherent ability to reflect the character of the region and thus express the innate qualities of a place in which the work is situated.

As the generally accepted principles of modern exhibition space dictate, the exclusive use of artificial light in art galleries expanded dramatically.

Frampton complains about this encapsulation that has been widely recognized as the tendency to reduce the artwork to a commodity because such an exhibition atmosphere is invented to render the work 71 as placeless. The local light is hardly given a chance to wander playfully along the surface of an artwork and this loss of atmosphere is attributed by Frampton to the theories of Walter Benjamin as he explains this phenomenon as a result of the processes of mechanical reproduction which also arises from a comparatively static application of a universal technology.

Frampton proposes an alternative to this “placeless practice”. The exhibition space can be designed to allow the direct sunlight from the top with carefully regulated monitors to eliminate the harmful effects of the sunlight and therefore the ambient light of the exhibition volume could change under the effect of time, season and humidity. Provided with such conditions, the exhibition space could accommodate the place-conscious poetics of a space composed of an interaction between culture and nature, art, and light.

This principle can apply to all fenestrations regardless 70, 71. Frampton, K. (1983). ‘Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance’ in Foster, H. (ed.) pp.

26-27. The definitions are paraphrased directly from Frampton’s view elaborated on the section “Culture versus Nature”.

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of their size and location. The constant regional manipulation of the form, in this case, the aperture of a building, is a direct result of the fact that in specific climates and locations, the glazings are advanced from the facade, and in others, it is recessed behind the exterior masonry skin. Frampton also believes that the manner in which such openings provide for appropriate ventilation also creates an unsentimental element reflecting the character of local culture and he considers the air conditioner as the main antagonist for the rooted culture as it was an application used all times at all places regardless of the local climatic conditions and believes that these conditions have the capacity to express the particular place and the seasonal variations of its climate. The ever-present fixed window and the air-conditioning systems indicate the domination of the universal technique.

However, in the end, even though he acknowledges the critical importance of topography and light, Frampton considers the “tectonic” rather than the “scenographic” to truly embody the architectural autonomy if it is ever to produce in accordance with the critically regionalist view. This sort of an understanding of the architectural autonomy as Frampton elaborates reveals itself in the construction and in the way in which the morphology of the structure clearly resists the gravity. The revelation or the disguise of the post and lintel system is not to define a discourse in this context and on the other hand tectonics cannot be handled in purely technical terms because it is more than the revelation of a stereotomy or the expression of a structural frame. Stanford Anderson, an architectural historian summarizes it the best; “Tektonik” referred not just to the activity of making the materially requisite construction... but rather to the activity that raises this construction to an art form... The functionally adequate form must be adapted so as to give expression to its function. The sense of bearing provided by the entasis of Greek columns became the touchstone of this concept of 72 “tektonik”.

72. Frampton, K. (1983). ‘Towards a Critical Regionalism’ pp.

27-28. The source is cited as Stanford Anderson, “Modern Architecture and Industry: Peter Behrens, the AEG, and Industrial Design” Oppositions 21 (Summer1980), p. 83.

The poetics of construction, namely the tectonic still constitutes today a potential medium for promoting play between material, craftwork and gravity, and Frampton states that the presentation of a structural poetic is more prominent at this point 73 rather than the re-presentation of a facade.

The conclusion in the research is done through the possible means to analyze the traces of a Critically regionalist approach, as Frampton names it “the visual versus tactile”. He states that the tactile resistance of the place-form and the capacity of the body to read the environment through senses other than sight suggests a potential strategy for defying 74 the domination of universal technology. Because of the given priority to sight, while examining architecture, we constantly remind ourselves of the tactile experience which constitutes an important dimension in the perception of a built-form. There is a range of complementary sensory perceptions such as the intensity of light, darkness, heat and cold, the feeling of humidity, the aroma of material, the presence of masonry or stereotomy as the body senses its own confinement, the momentum and the relative inertia of the body as it travels across the floors and the echoing resonance of our own footfall; Frampton exemplifies the “sensory experience other than sight” perfectly. A built example to experience the aforementioned is Alvar Aalto’s Säynätsalo Town Hall. The main corridor leading up to the second-floor council chamber is eventually organized in terms which are tactile as well as visual according to Frampton. The main access stair with its treads and risers is lined in raked brickwork. Frampton explains the feeling with the following;

to mention the springy deflection of the floor underfoot (and a noticeable tendency to lose oneself’s 75 balance on its polished surface).

From the example given by Frampton, we can understand that the progressive and the liberating importance of the tactile results from the fact that it can only be translated by the experience itself and it cannot be reduced to the raw information, representation or illustration of any kind.

Frampton concludes the discussion of the tactile dimension by stating that Critical Regionalism pursues a way to complement our normative visual experience by readdressing the tactile virtues of human perception. With such an attempt, it tries to balance the priority given to the image and tries to change the Western tendency to interpret the environment in strictly perspectival terms. Frampton states that by its etymology, perspective means the rationalization of sight and clear seeing and assumes a repression on other senses like smell, hearing and taste, and overall decreases the chance to experience the environment in a more direct sense. Heidegger claims that this attitude is a self-imposed limitation, a loss which results from the fact of “nearness”. To be able to diminish the effects of this loss, tactile opposes the conditions of scenographic and the veils over the surface that hides reality. To emphasize the importance of the tactile dimension over the forces of universal civilization, Frampton summarizes his view and concludes with the following;

The kinetic impetus of the body in climbing the stair is thus checked by the friction of the steps, which are “read” soon after in contrast to the timber floor of the council chamber itself. This chamber asserts its honorific status through sound, smell and texture, not

The capacity of tactile to arouse the impulse to touch returns the architect to the poetics of construction and to the erection of works in which the tectonic value of each component depends upon the density of its objecthood. The tactile and tectonic jointly have the capacity to transcend the mere appearance of the technical in much the same way as the place-form has the potential to withstand the relentless onslaught of 76 global modernization.

73, 74. Frampton, K. (1983). ‘Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance’ in Foster, H. (ed.) pp. 28-29. The statements are retreated and paraphrased from the section “The visual versus Tactile” and in the following paragraph they are reinterpreted.

75, 76. Frampton, K. (1983). ‘Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance’ in Foster, H. (ed.) pp. 28-29. The quotations are retreated directly from the section “The visual versus Tactile”.

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figure 18. S채yn채tsalo Town Hall, S채yn채tsalo, Alvar Aalto, 1976

fig 18.. Loves Domusweb. (2018). 20 Alvar Aalto's Projects - Loves Domusweb. [online] Available at: https://loves.domusweb.it/20-alvar-aaltos-projects/ [Accessed 1 Jul. 2018].

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seems to be proposing a solution to the conflict that is implicit in modern and postmodern attitude towards the handling of technology and place.

As Moore states, in the early 1980’s and 1990’s Critical Regionalism gained prominence, however afterward, it lost its central role because the protagonists of that conversation, Kenneth Frampton, Alexander Tzonis, and Liane Lefaivre have moved on to other topics and their projects have been 77 reframed in other discourses. Moore is willing to open the discussion again to reveal the possibilities that are contained within the modern conception of regionalism that can cultivate contemporary conditions. Technology and place are again taken as central points of discussion to elaborate on the regionalist architectural production. Moore follows a strategy setting his trajectory beforehand, such as the definition of the concept of place through the disciplines of geography and history and the modern construction of technology. The ultimate aim of the research

The traditional concept of the place is overwhelmingly devalued in modernist thought because modern social science has confused the distinction between place and community and fails to understand the society as a dynamic process that transforms but does not eliminate the concept of region.

The second reason according to Moore is the perception of local communities as being limiting and idiotic whereas the national societies were deemed as more liberating especially by philosophical figures 78 such as Marx. The liberation project of Enlightenment, in this sense, became the project of antitraditionalism and the loss of traditional village forms was seen at the same time as the loss of ideal social type.

To free the humans from their dependency on land and from the inherent hierarchical relations was understood by modernists as the grand scheme. The devaluation of place as a concept related to contemporary life began here at this point. Moore makes a quotation from the geographer John Agnew, who said; "Becoming modern involves casting off ties to place (in work, recreation and sense of identity) and adopting an 'achievement-oriented' or 'class-con79 scious' self that is placeless. Marxist ideology as mentioned before also promoted the devaluation of place in this sense. The traditional Marxist ideology did not consider social behavior to be determined by the conditions of place in any way as it would be extremely contradictory considering the dialectical order of the theory. Marxist position defends the idea that material order arises from a dialectic relationship with social activity. It is extremely, maybe even mind-openingly ironic recognizing that Marxist thinking devalued place on ideological grounds and it has been the market forces of Capitalism that has most effectively and dramatically devalued the notion

77. Moore, S. (2001). Technology, Place, and the Nonmodern Thesis. Journal of Architectural Education, [online] 54(3), p. 130.

Available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1425579. The information is retreated from the first column first paragraph.

78. Moore, S. (2001). Technology, Place, and the Nonmodern Thesis. p. 131. The reinterpretation is retreated directly from the first column second paragraph.

79. Moore, S. (2001). Technology, Place, and the Nonmodern Thesis. p. 131. The source of quotation is stated as Agnew, Place and Politics, p. 231. in the Acknowledgements section.

THE NONMODERN THESIS A variety of proposals for the regionalism theory in architectural discourse have emerged since the seventeenth century with shifting attitudes towards the central themes such as technology and place. Modern understanding, considering its priorities have valued technology and devalued place and postmodern understanding does the opposite. The norms of Critical Regionalism rejected the categorization because they valued both of these concepts positively. Steven Moore with his non-modern thesis theory presents a new attitude in which he criticises Critical Regionalism as he believes that it presents an unresolvable conflict.

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of place. Moore finalizes his definition of place with the following, a statement that can also be a reference in the context of strict architectural terms; By understanding the concept of place as a dynamic process that links humans and nonhumans in space at a variety of scales, we might get beyond the opposition between those who understand the concept as a set of objective structures and those who understand it as a set of romantic myths tied to 80 subjective experience.

Moore’s view with the help of Agnew’s analysis on the devaluation of place is extremely useful however in order to comprehend how the notion of place and the theory of regionalism has been employed in architecture, we should look deeper in the work of Alexander Tzonis and Liane Lefaivre. The essential point of view in their essay emerges when they distinguish regionalist architecture from regional architecture. The regional architecture is more attributed to the peculiarities of craft tradition that adapts itself to the local ecological conditions.

Regionalist architecture, on the other hand openly criticizes an architectural order that is applied as a result of universal technology. The regionalist approach according to Moore is both reactive and liberating against the imposed standards and seeks a liberation from a power that is considered foreign and 81 illegitimate.

Tzonis and Lefaivre present five ideological categories to the theory of Regionalism. The first one is the eighteenth century English picturesque architecture. In this approach, the cultivation of the landscape which intensifies the natural topography and the vegetation of a place was employed as an aesthetic tactic that would suppress the harsh imposition of classical order upon the local one. The second category, romantic regionalism, goes on with 80. Moore, S. (2001). Technology, Place, and the Nonmodern Thesis. p. 131. The quotation is retreated directly from the third column second paragraph.

81. Moore, S. (2001). Technology, Place, and the Nonmodern Thesis. p. 132. The interpretation is retreated from the first column first paragraph.

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the project of liberation from the central authority, this time constructing architecture as a memory machine that evokes one’s sense of affiliation to a familiar history. The third category, German National Socialism, favors for the authentic classification of forms which intends to exclude those other forms that threaten the spatial purity of the race. The fourth category, commercial regionalism, which can be defined as an architecture of tourism, promotes the cynical marketing of architectural motifs which prevents an understanding of place as an environmental production based on traditional construction practices. The fifth category, critical regionalism, has the potential to effectively resist to the traditionally restrictive conception of place as well as to the supremacy of global market. Tzonis and Lefaivre define a strategy of “defamiliarization”, in which architecture evokes meaning and thought rather than emotion and excitement. The scrutiny of the cultural and ecological origins of construction practices constitutes a central criterion rather than local scenographic fantasies that makes one fall into the trap of familiarity. In the perspective of Frampton, Critical Regionalism is an attitude, not a set of motifs, that aims to engage the inhabitants of a region in a mindset which carefully considers what it means to live locally. Even though we live our lives under the dictatorship of universal forces, the critical regionalism tells us that some of those forces might stimulate rather than suppress the creative response to the material conditions of places in which we find 82 ourselves.

The second definition that Moore wants to make is technology and similar to the notion of place, it requires a versatile strategy. The conventional thought recognizes place solely as a physical quality, likewise, technology is understood to be physical hardware. These kinds of materialist definitions

82. Moore, S. (2001). Technology, Place, and the Nonmodern Thesis. p. 132. The five ideological category of Critical Regionalism theory by Tzonis and Lefaivre is elaborated on the second and third columns, that information in the narrative is interpreted in the paragraph.

exclude the social construction of technological objects, which is probably the essential point of research. In the positivist thinking as well, technology is understood as the application of scientific truth independent of its social attributes. In the philosophical tradition, however, adopted by Heidegger for example, technology is understood as an ontological practice. On the contrary to both of these viewpoints, the literature of science and technology indicates that far from being constructed outside the society and being solely the practice of the poet, technology is inseparably the part of the society.

The essence of the non-modern thesis by Moore can be better understood with his infographic diagram. The purpose of the diagram is to discuss that modernity, in general, held a negative position against place because of the social hierarchies engraved within. In contrast, the technology is favored by modernists because it is believed that the machines invented by us will free humanity from place-bound despotisms. The main issue to be discovered in the diagram is that postmoderns did not construct a new worldview but only inverted the relationships converted by modern thought. Although the postmoderns tried to value place, the more and more they tried to do so, they have become ever more skeptical of modern technology. Critical Regionalism, on the other hand, tried to value both the technological means and the notion of place as positive forces in history. What Moore opposes here is not the objectives which are admirable, but the incompatibility of the assumptions that the theory relies on.

Modernism

PostModernism

Place

Technology

(-)

(+)

(+)

Diagram 1. The value opposition of place and technology in modern thought, Steven A. Moore

(-)

“Regenerative Architecture�, apart from other influential concepts that explain the non-modern thesis and theory through the prolific study of technology and place in the infographic diagram, constitutes the core idea of the non-modern thesis.

Rather than explaining the specificities of regenerative architecture, Moore makes a political statement; A regenerative architecture will seek to engage human institutions in the democratic reproduction of life-enhancing places. This is not yet an adequate definition of the possibilities foreseen in this essay, but it does point toward a cultural horizon where the dialogic relationship between technologies and places 83 can be better understood.

After defining the place and technology as core concepts on which critical regionalism depends, Moore summarizes the theory in three short prepositions. Firstly, Moore thinks that it is politically advantageous and ecologically cautious to reproduce a novel critical regionalism idea as a practice more relevant to contemporary conditions. In this sense, the regenerative architecture provides a framework through which the practice reconstructs and extends 84 that discourse.

Diagram 1. Moore, S. (2001). Technology, Place, and the Nonmodern Thesis. p. 135. The diagram is reproduced from its original.

83. Moore, S. (2001). Technology, Place, and the Nonmodern Thesis. p. 137. The quotation is retreated directly from the first column second paragraph.

84. Moore, S. (2001). Technology, Place, and the Nonmodern Thesis. p. 137. The interpretation is retreated from the first column fourth paragraph.

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NO

N

M

TECHNOLOGY

OD

ER

N

(-)

(+)

regenerative architecture (+) sustainability

conservative postmodernism

eco -tech

Critical Regionalism

neo-traditionalism, or new urbanism

PLACE

(-)

RN

E OD

M

orthodox modernism

radical nihilism

Diagram 2. Alternative theoretical positions with regard to the concepts place and technology, Steven A. Moore

Secondly, Moore thinks that it is essential to analyze the historic uses and misuses of regionalism as a concept with specific concentration on the geography of power relations. It is possible to create places that relate human institutions to the natural phenomena of a region without falling back on the appeals that authenticate and legitimize the authorities of social networks. On the contrary, a regenerative architecture might consciously and democratically construct places that associate humans with life-enhancing and changing practices. Lastly, Moore defends the idea that although critical regionalism offers a positive and life-enhancing direction for the practice of architecture, its assumptions are conflicted and require restoration as a non-modern discussion for architectural production. The articulation of a regenerative architectural theory would be a strong 85 endeavor to meet this challenge.

85. Moore, S. (2001). Technology, Place, and the Nonmodern Thesis. p. 137. The comment reflects Moore’s view directly and taken from the second column second paragraph.

Diagram 2. Moore, S. (2001). Technology, Place, and the Nonmodern Thesis. p. 136. The diagram is reproduced from its original.

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avant garde postmodernism:

To sum up his non-modern thesis, Moore states the following; As I have implied throughout this essay, the nonmodern dialogic requires that the discipline of architecture be reconstituted as a political, rather than an aesthetic, practice. Through this reconstitution, the canon of architecture would be reconceived as not a set of heroic objects but the material record of life-enhancing discourses. This proposal suggests that architects would no longer design "things" per se.

Rather, we would design the political processes embodied in technological and topological choices.

Indeed, we would no longer distinguish between tech86 nologies and places.

86. Moore, S. (2001). Technology, Place, and the Nonmodern Thesis. p. 137. The quotation is retreated directly from the third column third paragraph.

THE CONCLUSION The interplay, conflict and critical analysis on autonomy and contextualism concepts begin as early as the architectural education. A student is introduced to the methods and strategies that help to organize space, and then to the elements that define and articulate that very space. We owe this process to the utility aspect of architecture that has to meet the criteria to accommodate and cultivate human life in the most practical and comfortable manner, with the help of various spatial articulations. Naturally, an architects mind, and the profession accordingly, develops an autonomous ground in which the practice determines its own set of factors that shape the built object both confined and freed by the practicalities it has to provide, nevertheless being irrespective of any exterior phenomena that claim its own set of factors over the power of architecture itself. This state of autonomy, which is in constant evolution formally, is branded as the interiority of architecture.

Following this stage, however, a student is introduced with the idea of project that has a location, a particular land to be built on, single or several functionalities that have to be produced, specific audiences that will experience the built work, an environment and particular surroundings that will be affected by its presence, an atmosphere that could be changed or adapted to, a history that could be continued, reproduced, reinterpreted, de-codified, neglected or even betrayed. These set of drives that determine the behavior of architecture towards its context is branded as the exteriority of architecture.

The eventual questions appear immediately as to how an architect could favor any of the aforementioned drives above the other, does one have to or should even do so or if they should be incorporated or respected equally how a theory of relations that will set the behavior of any practice will emerge out of this interplay?

There have been numerous cases in which both the academy and practice of architecture asked and replied the same questions many times over, however, the debate still continues to be a polarizing one. Particularly in the contemporary period, the answers from the architectural practice generated an extensive archive, however, it cannot be dwelled on to derive a theory from as they tackle the issues in their own specific context in small scales and the questions asked are limited to the confines of the practice. The attitude of this research has been so far the one that tries to rediscover and understand the absolute origins that resulted in the disintegration of these concepts, in the end aiming to derive a theory from the processes which defined the debate in the first place.

Contemporary discourse seems to reduce the discussion to a set of factors or concepts as in the case of architectural education rather than extracting overarching conclusions by tracing the entire course of architecture history and analyzing the discontinuities that actually resulted in the debate. On the contextualism side, the discussion is reduced to the employment of particular concepts in the practice of architecture, such as materiality, scale, proportionality, precedent analysis, sensitivity to the existing surroundings and etc. That should go without saying that these concepts work tremendously and are invaluable in the design processes which particularly tackle with an issue in an urban context, however, in the contemporary period they constitute the imperatives rather than the alternatives of architectural practice. On the autonomy side, the design process seems to revolve around the so-called trends of the practice and the architectural education such as personal attitudes attributed to the realm of arts and crafts, the representational realm that depends on the visual and diagrammatic production of architecture and the digital modes of production trying to recreate the elements and the methods of space-creation.

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The mentality of this research takes these circumstances as a result and a continuity within the historical evolution of architectural discourse, not as a discontinuity to be traced back to reveal a meaningful ideological framework. Considering the dramatic rate of evolution in the last two hundred years of architectural production, compared to the previous period that goes until the origins, the industrial revolution can be taken as a discontinuity that caused a rupture and thereby started the formation of other continuities. The advent of the capitalist production and development thanks to the industrial revolution and thereby the rapid technological development with its highly innovative systems resulted in the idea of a universal civilization. A state of mind that single-handedly takes care of any production system, ideologically and practically. Especially in the twenty-first century, humankind witnesses it all around the world in any field including communication, transportation, production, and construction.

It may be stunning to see at this point that both autonomy and contextualism concepts, considering their original roots as discovered in the research, are the responses to a same state of mind that is dramatically and rapidly headed towards the achievement of a “universal civilization” or “universalization”. Aldo Rossi’s and Kenneth Frampton’s theories regarding these responses constitute the most valid ones coming from both sides. Rossi’s opposition to the totalizing image of urban development dictated by capitalist development, his outright rejection of any overarching ideological statement that breaks the heterogeneity of the city and his support for the geographic singularity and the autonomy of urban artifact can be analyzed as one origin to the theory of autonomous architecture. Frampton’s criticism on the state of “universal civilization” devaluing the localities that in the past contributed greatly to the state of architectural production, his opposition to the universal application of any construction system that devalues the role of “place” in the design processes and his long support for the apotheosis of a “world culture” that rediscovers the localities can be

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explained as another origin to the statement of contextualism, even though Frampton tried to reach to an integration between the seemingly opposite concepts.

The right path to follow, as a consequence to this research, would be to take each case independently as we can acknowledge at this point the existence of each “individual context” in terms of the design process. Critical analysis constitutes the main method to be employed here, recognizing the prospective impact of any “interiority” or “exteriority” to the architectural production. To be able to identify the criteria to select among this infinite data repository, an architect should both embrace the autonomy of his specific acts irrespective of any external factor and the existence of external factors that can dictate and control his specific acts at any given time. Taking sides, at this point, is not a possible solution for the creation of a resistant architecture. The acts we define as autonomous or contextual are perfectly capable of resulting in the other opposite. The reasons for the integration or namely “critical selection” are clearly laid out here in this research and the main obstacle is identified as the embrace of the state of “universal civilization” without any critical analysis.

The labels as “autonomous” and “contextual” considering the experience of any work are also dictated by the same state of mind. Obviously, inevitably, we cannot escape universalization or look over the systems that it dictates or presents under the brand of “innovation”, however, its incorporation with the world culture and localities to create meaningful and resistant production methodologies is possible. The words of the prolific architecture historian Manfredo Tafuri could shed light on the dilemma; The history of contemporary architecture is inevitably multiple, multifarious even; a history of the structures that form the human environment independently of architecture itself; a history of the attempts to control and direct those structures; a history of the intellectuals who have sought to device policies and methods for those attempts; a history of

new languages which, having abandoned all hope of arriving at absolute and definitive words, have striven to delimit the area of their particular contribution.

Obviously, the intersection of all those manifold histories will never end up in unity. The realm of history is, by nature, dialectical. It is that dialectic that we have tried to pin down, and we have done what we could not to smooth over conflicts which are cropping up today in the form of worrisome questions as to what role architecture itself should or can have. It is useless to try to reply to such questions. What needs to be done, instead, is to trace the entire course of modern architecture with an eye to whatever cracks and gaps break up its compactness, and then to make a fresh start, without, however, elevating to the status of myth either the continuity of history or those separate discontinuities.

Manfredo Tafuri, L’architettura Contemporanea

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THE BARCELONA CASE The city of Barcelona is a unique case and, so to speak, it is an architectural heaven for the sensitive eyes of any designer, architect, and urban planner. The cityscape is vivid, full of extremely articulated details and well-organized. Life just flows through the streets with its complex network. Each public space, without any exception, is meticulously designed. Every now and then a Gaudi building or an anonymous artwork surprises the spectator. The old Gothic Quarter, a legacy from the Roman town planning understanding, lures any visitor in with its narrow streets.

The city was further expanded by the grid planning of Ildefonso Cerdรก in the nineteenth century. In the contemporary period, we associate the name of the city, Barcelona, with this well-known image of grid organization of the built environment. The strategy in the planning could easily be branded as an autonomous one, with its dominating geometry, however, the details suggest an external factor. The whole grid is shaped around three axes, the parallel, the meridian, named after their counterparts in the field of geography, and the diagonal that connects their ends as in the case of a perpendicular triangle. The chamfered upper and lower corners of each unit within the grid faces north and south, suggesting a passive design principle for the orientation of housing units. Each block has its own courtyard isolated from the hectic streetscape, providing a cozy and cool atmosphere during hot summer days The interplay between autonomy and contextualism is engraved within the codes of the city.

The architecture and planning history of Barcelona, prolific design culture that values the employment of data extracted from the cultural and social contexts of the city, and contemporary networks and way of life that directs the region to a certain sense of universalization all create a fruitful atmosphere for the application of the theory discovered in the previous research.

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THE SITE The location of the project is particularly intriguing, considering the scope of the previous research. Through the southwest end of the city, The Diagonal axis is surrounded by office towers and campus buildings of the university. The commercial life is hectic with shopping malls, banks, entertainment areas, the football stadium and the student population escalates the situation. The urban life around here is not what people expect in their pre-conceived image of Barcelona. All these factors result in different architectural and urban outcomes, the towers with huge glazings, mass housings, loosely defined streetscapes and public spaces, wide roads to allow the extensive vehicle traffic and many gated communities as a result of the level of welfare that one can feel by simply walking around the neighborhood. The “universal civilization” can be felt to the core and it infiltrates the city from this starting point.

Five minutes to this universalization, a small calm neighborhood is located behind the periphery of the Diagonal, the traditional Barcelona image is somehow restored here. The comparatively narrow streets, traditional facades, an old church, a vivid public space with small restaurants at the adjacent corners of the blocks reminds us of the other conventional neighborhoods of Barcelona.

The project site is located at the center point of this complex network. Taking two minutes stroll forward we witness the extreme effects of universal civilization, two minutes stroll backward takes us to a locality that is reminiscent of the traditional cityscape of Barcelona. The tension between these two forces is inevitably determinant in the overall process of design.

Just next to the project site, the L’illa shopping mall designed by Rafael Moneo and Manuel de Solà-Morales rises. The huge urban scheme with a public school and other additional facilities redefines the whole block with its strong existence. The grid facade with its continuity along the axis of Diagonal dominates the visual experience of any visitor. The response that is going to be given to the existence of this visual and physical domination will constitute an important design criterion.

The idiosyncratic shapes of the project plots, ironically, are the results of the tension between the two seemingly opposite networks. The conflict between the scale of the two parts of the neighborhood created these leftover spaces. The struggle between the representatives of universal civilization and world culture continues here at this particular site, creating a prospect to expand the discussion on physical and cultural terms. The role of the project to incorporate these two distinct realities will be another design criteria. The character of the place, namely the context is determined here by a dialectical relationship which will ultimately and ironically resolve the conflict.

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4 5 6 2 3 1

1

2

3

Carrer de Dr. Ibanez

Cristalleries Planell

Carrer de Vilamur

4

5

6

Pedralbes Centre

El Corte Ingles

Avinguda Diagonal .49

fig 19. L'illa Diagonal, Rafael Moneo and Manuel de SolĂ -Morales, 1993

fig 20. L'illa Diagonal, Rafael Moneo and Manuel de SolĂ -Morales, 1993

fig 19.. Todobarcelona.org. (2018). [online] Available at: http://www.todobarcelona.org/wp-content/uploads/3635554852_e0d5a17961_o1.jpg [Accessed 27 Jun. 2018]. fig 20.. Barcelona-home.com. (2018). [online] Available at: http://barcelona-home.com/events-andguide/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/largeimage-2.jpg [Accessed 27 Jun. 2018].

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THE PROJECT The response given to an existing building and its visual and physical domination around the project plot constitutes the initial design idea. The compactness given the nature and the surroundings of the plot supports the initial input provided by the L’illa mall. The project is designed through the systematic accumulation of a steel framework. The revelation of the structural skeleton of the building provides a visual and physical experience which is not overwhelming and in opposition to the strong presence of L’illa. Furthermore, the construction system can be classified as a mere imposition of the universalization in architecture which is rapid, innovative and highly dependent on technology.

The grid imposed on the project plot to organize the structural composition and the space making strategies constitutes an autonomous approach and a mediate reference to the planning history and culture of the city, considering the Cerdá blocks. The setbacks from the exterior outlines of the structure and the inclination of the overall mass constitute the contextual response. Along the traditional part of the neighborhood, the modesty of the mass articulation strikes the critical eye as the built mass is dramatically lowered compared to the other extreme which is increased in height resulting in a tower-like structure, responsive to the modern, or so to speak, universal part of the neighborhood.

The contextual understanding is also apparent in the functional layout of the project. The triangular plot is allocated for a local food market with a sunken public space extending through the plot beneath the tower, including a small refreshing garden at the left corner and another public space created above the roof constructed with the playful use of universal steel application.

The boundary of the public surface created above is retreated from the existing housing projects to respect the privacy of the residents. The overall marketplace is sure to create a hidden gem for the neighborhood. Other closed spaces of the proposal, including the tower are reserved for the use of offices, mainly start-ups and student-based initiatives with their connections to the real sector, acting as a potential technological hub of the nearby technical university. The carved spaces within the building constitute and shed light on the common creation areas for the use of students, designers and startups, designed through the reinterpretation and articulation of the traditional Barcelona courtyards.

In conclusion, the overall approach employed in the project design is the one that both values the autonomy and contextualism theories in the sense of references attributed to both the technological applications of “universal civilization” and “the world culture” preserving localities.

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initial plan sketch for the functional layout and the structural composition

initial section sketch for the food market

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progression schema and the design strategy

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+0.50 ground plan

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LIST OF FIGURES figure 1: Casabella Continuità, Magazinecover, 1959..................................................................................................7 figure 2: L’Architettura Della Cità, Magazinecover, 1966..........................................................................................8 figure 3: New Centro Direzionale, Torino, sketches, 1962........................................................................................12 figure 4: New Centro Direzionale, Torino, physical model, 1962.............................................................................13 figure 5: New Centro Direzionale, Torino, site plan, 1962.........................................................................................14 figure 6: New Centro Direzionale, Torino, axonometric, 1962.................................................................................15 figure 7: New Centro Direzionale, Torino, pyhsical model, 1962..............................................................................15 figure 8: Campo Marzio dell’antica Roma, Piranesi, 1762.........................................................................................19 figure 9: Tomb of Porsenna King of Etruria, The labyrinth of Tuscany, Lequeu, 1792..........................................20 figure 10: The Ideal City of Chaux, Ledoux, 1773......................................................................................................20 figure 11: The Ideal City of Chaux, Ledoux, 1773.........................................................................................................21 figure 12: The Ideal City of Chaux, Ledoux, 1773........................................................................................................21 figure 13: La Nuova Topografia di Roma, Nolli, 1748.................................................................................................24 figure 14: Campo Marzio dell’antica Roma, Piranesi, 1762.......................................................................................24 figure 15: Bagsværd Church, Copenhagen, Jorn Utzon, 1976.................................................................................31 figure 16: Bagsværd Church, Copenhagen, Jorn Utzon, 1976................................................................................32 figure 17: Bagsværd Church, Copenhagen, Jorn Utzon, 1976................................................................................33 Diagram 1: The value opposition of place and technology, Steven A. Moore, 2001............................................40 Diagram 2: Alternative theoretical positions, place and technology, Steven A. Moore, 2001..........................41 figure 18: Säynätsalo Town Hall, Alvar Aalto, 1976................................................................................................37 figure 19: L'illa Diagonal, Rafael Moneo and Manuel de Solà-Morales, 1993.......................................................50 figure 20: L'illa Diagonal, Rafael Moneo and Manuel de Solà-Morales, 1993..................................................50

BIBLIOGRAPHY 1. Aureli, P. (2013). The Project of Autonomy. 4th ed. New York: The Temple Hoyne Buell Center and Princeton Architectural Press 2. Tafuri, M. and La Penta, B. (1979). Architecture and Utopia. 1st ed.

Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press 3. Corbo, S. (2014). From Formalism to Weak Form. 1st ed. London: Ashgate Publishing Limited 4. Frampton, K. (1983). ‘Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance’ in Foster, H. (ed.) The Anti-aesthetic. 1st ed.

Seattle: Bay Press, pp. 16-31.

5. Moore, S. (2001). Technology, Place, and the Nonmodern Thesis.

Journal of Architectural Education, [online] 54(3), p. 130-139. Available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1425579.

MINOR REFERENCES 1. Lowry, S. (2018). Worker and student struggles in Italy, 1962-1973. [online] Libcom.org. Available at: http://libcom.org/history/1962-1973-worker-student-struggles-italy [Accessed 7 Jun. 2018].

2. Carlo Aymonino, Il Significato della città (Padua: Marcilio 2000), p.4. Source retreated from the “Notes and Credits” chapter of Aureli’s book “The Project of Autonomy”.

3. Ricoeur, P. and Rasmussen, D. (2007). History and truth. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, pp.276-277. Quotation retreated directly and the source found from the endnotes of Kenneth Frampton.

4. Andreas Huyssens, “The search for Tradition: Avant-Garde and Postmodernism in the 1970’s”, New German Critique 22 (Winter 1981), p. 34. Quotation retreated directly and the source found from the endnotes of Kenneth Frampton.

5. Herbert Marcuse, One Dimensional Man Boston: Beacon Press, 1964), p. 156. Quotation retreated directly and the source found from the endnotes of Kenneth Frampton.

6. Alex Tzonis and Lilian Lefaivre, “The Grid and the Pathway. An Introduction to the work of Dimitris and Susana Antonakakis”, Architecture in Greece, 15 (Athens: 1981), p. 178.

7. ArchDaily. (2018). AD Classics: Bagsværd Church / Jørn Utzon. [online] Available at: https://www.archdaily.com/160390/ad-classics-bagsvaerd-church-jorn-utzon [Accessed 18 Jun. 2018].

8. Stanford Anderson, “Modern Architecture and Industry: Peter Behrens, the AEG, and Industrial Design” Oppositions 21 (Summer1980), p. 83.

9. Agnew, Place and Politics, p. 231.

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