Social Space | Bernard Tschumi

Postscript

As I have discussed before in the preface, the spirit of postmodernism is more like a thinking tool or an attitude towards life. If we go back to the origin of everything, this way of thinking can trace back to the critical spirit. According to the analysis of all the topics this semester, we will find that these topics are discussed and unfolded based on the point of criticism.

For example, the topic of Tafuri’s postmodernism theory is mainly about the criticism of current social ideology1; the topic of David Harvey’s thought about the urban space is a rethinking of urban space under capitalism2; the topic of drawing ambiance revisits how the architecture itself and its drawing can translate and communicate with each other3; the topic of the postmodernism theory of history shows how it breaks the boundaries of time and space in the modernism theory of history4; and also the topic of feminism criticizes how the patriarchal thought controls the process of architectural design and education5, and many more. All these discussions try to help us escape the shackles of dogmatic thinking, and use a critical spirit to re-understand something that we may have become accustomed to.

When we are proposing critiques and make critical comments, we are trying to use the sense of criticism. The sense of criticism actually roots in the sense of crisis. The architectural critic Ada Louise Huxtable once was asked by a French journalist: "Just what polemical position do you write from?"6 Huxtable replied: "From crisis to crisis..."6 In Ronald Reagan’s era, there was a lot of exaggerated architectural fashion in the United States, and Huxtable criticized it mercilessly.7 When this trend passed, she chose to continue to criticize the next crisis.6 At the same time, the postmodernism we are discussing now is far from the end of an architectural theory discussion, but only a stage we are currently in. Perhaps the conclusion of criticism will become the object of the next criticism. We should always maintain the spirit of Huxtable: “From crisis to crisis.”6

So for the future architectural design, from which angles should we criticize? I think Tafuri’s critique of architectural ideology is still very pertinent to today’s society.8 Take the urban landscape design in today's society as an example, although there exists positive significance to insert the organic ecological system into the city, the urban landscape itself has become a centralized design language.8 This kind of design language is trying to include everything such as architectural space and urban streets into one organic design form, which will conceal the real contradictions and complexities.8 From Tafuri’s interpretation, this design approach is an ideological operation, turning the urban landscape into an illusion and concealing the contradictions inspired by land exploitation.7 The fundamental reason for this ideological operation comes from the lack of criticalness and rationality.

As far as the actual architectural design work in China is concerned, the lack of criticalness in design works is very common. When you are at the forum or the seminar of a construction project, you will find that the first party or the government often lacks the clear positioning and the ability to sort out problems in the initial stage of the project. Also, the architects will be eager to judge and directly give a design method like a template, even they don’t investigate what the real problem is in this site. I think that critical thinking needs to go beyond one's own thinking mindset. As an architect, we should first consider what the problem is before considering what the answer is. Especially, we cannot directly use tricks or fixed form to simply achieve our own architectural design work. I think that as basic architectural ethics, architects should at least know what kind of harm their design will bring to the city and the environment. It should not be that as long as there is first party, contract, and design fees, the architects can ignore the sociality of the architecture, directly enter the purely aesthetic formalism or commercialism operation in order to get benefits from it.

So, what would the future of the architecture field look like? It is impossible to make any predictions, but I can use the thinking of architectural critic Kenneth Frampton as a reference.9 In his analytical article about Swiss and German production of architecture, he quoted Theodor Adorno's concept of "Minimal Moralia"11 in his article title.10 The concept of “Minimal Moralia”11 was talking about how to adhere to the minimum morality after the social norms were completely damaged.11 In Frampton’s article, he criticized a group of architects with "minimalism" tendencies such as Herzog & De Meuron and Zumthor.10 He thought that they designed the house as a pure art installation, which was too abstract, and showed little respect for people.10 From his point of view, this kind of aesthetics was actually the process of commercialization. It was trying to create a cool style that would be commercialized later. He believed that the so-called criticism was not to indulge in criticism for the sake of wanton denial but to arouse the sensibility, sharpen the disputes, so as to overcome the destructive dictatorship of form as much as possible.10 Most importantly, he thought that we must resist the ubiquitous threat. In an age of media, we can not slip into a kind of intellectual sleepwalking, in which everything seems to be pursuing maximum aesthetics, only to help the commoditized world maximize its benefits.10

In conclusion, for the future, we should always maintain a keen critical ability. In architectural design, we should not be bound by dogmatic thinking, but can constantly explore the potential of the design that has not been explored.

1. Manfredo Tafuri, The Language of Criticism and the Ctiticism of Language. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987). p5-2. 2. David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change. (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Published, 1989). 3. Robin Evans, Translations from Drawing to Building. (Architectural Association School of Architecture, 1986). 4. Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Global Transformations: Anthropology and the Modern World. (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). 5. Akis Didaskalou, “Making Love/Making Architecture,” in Desiring Practices: Architecture, Gender and the Interdisciplinary,ed. Rüedi, Katerina, Sarah Wigglesworth and Duncan McCorquodale (London: Black Dog Publishing, 1996), 116–131. 6. Ada Louise Huxtable, “Architectural Critic for the Ages,” Particular Passions. Retrieved February 26, 2020. 7. Mary McLeod, Architecture and Politics in the Reagan Era: From Postmodernism to Deconstructivism. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989). no. 8: p23-59. 8. Manfredo Tafuri, Architecture and Utopia: Design and Capitalist Development. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1973). 9. Zhu Tao, “In an Age of Poverty, What is Criticism,” Archiposition, accessed March 9, 2018, https://www.archiposition.com/ items/20180525115522. 10. Kenneth Frampton, Labour, Work and Architecture: collected essays on architecture and design. (New York: Phaidon Press, 2002). 11. Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life. (London: Verso, 1951). 31