Heat Takes Time

“What could a utopic architecture be, if architecture remains grounded in the spatial alone? How can architecture open itself up to the temporal movements that are somehow still beyond its domain?” 1

At the beginning of the 1960s Claude Lévi-Strauss suggested distinguishing between ‘cold’ and ‘hot’ societies in order avoid judgemental characterisations that separate supposedly ‘a-historic peoples’ that attempt to ‘annul the effect that historical factors could have on their balance and their continuity’ from those peoples that ‘decisively internalise historical growth in order to make it into the motor of their development.’ 2 According to this definition it seems logical to describe modern Western states and their populations as ‘hot societies’, after all, climate change appears to reveal just how incompetent these societies are as regards reversing their motor of development that is constantly focussed on acceleration and growth.

Jan Assmann has undertaken an important differentiation of this concept. Lévi-Strauss’ definition assumes that a ‘cold society’ can develop into a ‘hot’ one, but not the other way around, as it is taken for granted that the invention of written and visual media, which make it possible to exteriorise knowledge of the environment and therefore to disseminate it rapidly, cannot be forgotten. Assmann, however, points out that there have been both highly developed cultures of writing unfamiliar with any motors of progress (for example ancient Egypt), as well as ‘cold’ institutions such as the Church or the military which can ‘freeze’ social change in ‘hot societies’. For him cold and heat are to be understood as 'cultural options which at any time exist independently of writing, calendars, technology and rule’. 3 Although every society has a tendency towards the ‘hot’ or the ‘cold’ pole, it can avail of ‘cooling and heating systems’, with which it can shape its existence and development.

Angelika Schnell Lisa Schmidt-Colinet 17

GLC HTC HISTORY THEORY CRITICISM GEOGRAPHY LANDSCAPES CITIES

Behind this concept is a questioning of the idea of linear and teleological progress that is still widely seen as self-explanatory and that appears to be inscribed in the architectural design process as long as it is assumed that a bad present must be overcome to provide a better future. However, the design process itself has an entire series of internal and external time strategies with which it is possible to shift between forwards and backwards, cyclical, chaotic or stagnating; it is an ‘ … action time that is associated with action and is more richly structured’ and can be described as ‘time gestalt’. 4 Equipped with this knowledge architectural thought can ‘implant itself’ not only in space but also in time in order to develop new ways of looking at critical situations.

Two consequences of the progress model that illustrate where the latter has arrived at its ‘turning point’ are to be examined. The phenomenon of ‘overtourism’ and the increasing heat in cities create immense problems for Vienna’s First District in particular. It is one of the densest (buildings, people, history), and also, despite (or because of) the fact that it is bustling with tourists, one of the most saturated or ‘most frozen’ urban districts – who would want to build here? On this account it offers a suitable example for reflecting both metaphorically and in concrete terms about how ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ zones could be newly designed in accordance with other temporal models. Must the same temperature conditions prevail everywhere and anytime, or can temperatures be adapted to imagined functions? Or could entirely different temporal cycles for the functions of existing buildings and urban spaces be developed? Would this, in turn, demand more or less movement between temperature zones that change rapidly and those that hardly change at all? Could the streams of tourists that are limited as regards when they occur but are permanently registered offer a possibility for new design ideas? Should densities of use be rectified spatially and temporally, and should the use of certain areas be abandoned so that they can be made temporarily ‘fallow’? Might existing climatic zones such as St Stephen’s Cathedral, which have been stable over cycles of seasons and through centuries, contain a ‘cooling system’ strategy? And, must we ourselves reorganise our thinking about the future as a kind of Future Perfect: something will have been?

Angelika Schnell, Lisa Schmidt-Colinet

1 Elizabeth Grosz, ‘Embodied Utopias: The Time of Architecture’, in: ead., Architecture from the Outside. Essays on Virtual and Real Space, MIT Press, Cambridge/Mass. 2001, p. 13 2 Claude Lévi-Strauss, Das wilde Denken (La pensée sauvage, Paris 1962), Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1968, p. 270 3 Jan Assmann, Das kulturelle Gedächtnis. Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in frühen Hochkulturen (1992), C.H. Beck, München 2002, p. 69 4 Karen Gloy, Zeit. Eine Morphologie, Karl Alber Verlag, Freiburg/München 2006, p. 75 1 Elizabeth Grosz, ‘Embodied Utopias: The Time of Architecture’, in: ead., Architecture from the Outside. Essays on Virtual and Real Space, MIT Press, Cambridge/Mass. 2001, p. 13 2 Claude Lévi-Strauss, Das wilde Denken (La pensée sauvage, Paris 1962), Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1968, p. 270 3 Jan Assmann, Das kulturelle Gedächtnis. Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in frühen Hochkulturen (1992), C.H. Beck, München 2002, p. 69 4 Karen Gloy, Zeit. Eine Morphologie, Karl Alber Verlag, Freiburg/München 2006, p. 75