DELAMINATING THE REAL
UNPACKING THE PHYSICAL EXPRESSION OF IDEOLOGY IN GOVERNMENT BUILDINGS LAWRY BOYER
Delaminating the Real Author: © Lawrence Boyer 2022 All rights reserved. B. Arch Undergraduate Thesis, 2017-2022 Syracuse University School of Architecture Renee Crown Honors Program Syracuse, New York Contact: lmboyer04@gmail.com +1 (703)407-8735 LawryBoyer.com Thesis Advisors: Lawrence Chua Susan Henderson Lawrence Davis Timur Hammond General Advisors: Ognen Marina Mitesh Dixit Special Thanks: Michael Giannattasio Robert Weaver John Bryant Ethan Levine Jesse Wetzel Blagoja Bajkovski Borjan Menkinoski Filip Velkoski Production Assistants: Benjamin Wang Yida Li A.J. Laucks Max Walewski Typeface: Amiri Gotham Printer: Printivity Print run: 10 copies
DELAMINATING THE REAL Unpacking the physical expression of political ideology in government buildings
LAWRY BOYER Syracuse University School of Architecture
Skopje, MEPSO Building
CONTENT Introduction Framework
Washington, DC
Constructing the Invisible Skopje
Fabrication Topic Map
Bibliography
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21 57 93
119 151 193 195
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This research work would be impossible without generous support, guidance, and encouragement from several advisors, mentors, and resources at Syracuse University and beyond.
I would also like to thank my primary thesis advisors from the School of Architecture, Prof. Lawrence Chua, Prof. Lawrence Davis, and Prof. Susan Henderson for their generous feedback throughout the development of my research work and their continual support and encouragement. All contributed greatly with critical discussion of my work and were very generous with their time and resources and for that I am incredibly grateful.
Many thanks to my honors reader, Prof. Timur Hammond from the Department of Geography, who served as the primary advisor for my written work. His interdisciplinary and rigorous approach enabled me to examine my project in greater detail and encouraged a greater degree of precision in my thoughts and the presentation of my project.
I’d also like to thank the Renee Crown Honors Program for their support of my research and providing me with funding which enabled me to travel for my research. Visiting the cities of Washington DC and Skopje was an incredible experience that helped me understand the subject and background of my research as well as develop my methodology with improved clarity and depth, as well as my own personal independence.
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Finally, a great deal of gratitude towards my parents and family who supported me throughout school and have always been encouraging of my projects and interests. I surely wouldn’t be here without them.
ix | Acknowledgments
Skopje Old Fortress
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Washington Monument, Washington, DC Photo by Benjamin Wang
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Statue of Alexander the Great, Skopje
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Right: Statue of Christopher Columbus in front of Union Station, Washington, DC
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Left: US Capitol Building, Washington, DC
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INTRODUCTION
Delaminating the Real is an investigation of the ways in which national governments use architecture as a tool of national narrative, identity, and dissemination of ideology. Using the case studies of Washington, DC, and Skopje, North Macedonia, I will reveal a genealogy of classicism and the ways in which ornament has been adapted and appropriated throughout history to different ends.
Societies have long recognized the importance of beautiful public architecture. Architects and politicians alike have had the beauty of architecture at the forefront of their planning and construction efforts for its purported ability to inspire civic pride, honor, wealth, and impart an impression to visitors from foreign cities or countries. But who decides what makes architecture beautiful and how?
After studying in the Balkan peninsula through a summer SU Abroad research course in 2019, I became interested in the city of Skopje, the capital of North Macedonia, for its rich architectural history and bilingual architectural language of Brutalist and Classicist buildings in the city center. I then saw a unique connection between Skopje and the U.S. capital, Washington, DC, in terms of their architectural styles that might otherwise be overlooked given the many differences between the countries and the size of North Macedonia. This interest started the process of my research into the histories of these two cities and their architecture.
While Washington and Skopje may not seem to share much in common at first, they share many aspects in common with regards to their architecture. Both cities were planned by foreign architects (French and Japanese respectively) which played a
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The capital city of Washington, DC was planned in 1791 by French architect Pierre L’Enfant and many of its first buildings were constructed under the supervision of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Over time, the city has seen many plans for development and new construction as it was visually transformed into the capital of a large country with significant international political influence. Its civic buildings
have ranged in style from Classical to Brutalist among others depending on the era of construction and the popular styles at the time. Meanwhile in Eastern Europe, in 1963, a magnitude 6.1 earthquake destroyed more than 80% of the city of Skopje (in what is now North Macedonia). In the following years, the city was rebuilt under a masterplan by the Japanese architect Kenzo Tange in a humanitarian effort sponsored by the United Nations. It quickly became known as the city of international solidarity. Fifty years later, the city began a project of its own: the Skopje 2014 Project, which reclad many of the concrete buildings built in the 1960s with white, classically styled facades, and constructed many new buildings of a similar style including the Macedonian Government Building, the Museum of Archaeology, and a National Theatre. The project was also responsible for the construction of hundreds of fountains and monuments scattered throughout the city with the goal of retroactively creating a narrative of national identity in methods used by other capital cities. However, some of the original concrete buildings remain, leaving behind a visually dialectical identity of the city which contrasts the newer Classical with an older Brutalism.
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PROJECT BACKGROUND
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heavy role in the appearances of the cities while they were at the center of international politics.1 The cities also share their use of primarily two internationally used architectural styles: Brutalism and Classicism. While these styles are used in a way to claim national identity, the styles are used and recognized across the globe and don’t carry the heritage of any one country. The shared interest of these governments in the appearance of the city, results in the privileging of a certain aesthetic sensibility to express national identity to an international audience; these choices create architectural tension between universal recognition and regional idiom.
3 | Introduction
In 2020, President Donald Trump signed executive order 13967: “Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture”, which criticized Modernist and Brutalist federal buildings in Washington, pointing to “traditional architecture”2 as the desired architectural style of the federal government. The order would not only restrict new construction to be within these styles but required that an evaluation of recladding any federal building be made when renovation work was to be performed. While President Joseph Biden overturned the order before any significant changes were made, there are strong parallels with the Skopje 2014 project in the
way that classical styling is preferred aesthetically, and likely the city would have seen similar effects if the order had not been revoked. The executive order also asserts the current visual state of the District as “a discordant mixture of Classical and modernist designs” – similar to the current state of Skopje.
Architecture has an abundant and precise language to describe space, the technical, and the formal functions of its elements, but lacks such language to describe ideological functions. Building is fundamentally linked with politics and therefore with ideology. One can understand one through examining the other. The scope of this project will compare the unbuilt and invisible aspects of ideology with the built and visible: architecture. It will document and create a grammar of extant architectural elements in the Brutalist and Classical styles and will reveal the way ideas and authority are transmitted by buildings, resulting in the construction of the identity of a nation created by the architecture of its capital city.
1 Skopje was at the forefront of international attention after the 1963 earthquake whereas Washington was in a similar position after the revolutionary war. Both cities took the opportunity to (re)design their capital cities in a manner that would be internationally recognized with the aid of international designers. 2 “Traditional architecture includes classical architecture, as defined herein, and also includes the historic humanistic architecture such as Gothic, Romanesque, Pueblo Revival, Spanish Colonial, and other Mediterranean styles of architecture historically rooted in various regions of America.” – Quoted from Executive Order 13967.
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SKOPJE
Eastern Europe has recently received much attention in architectural discourse with the 2018 exhibition, Toward a Concrete Utopia: Architecture in Yugoslavia, 1948– 1980 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. While this discussion examines the Yugoslav era concrete Brutalism prevalent across the region, much of the academic focus on Balkan architecture has not exceeded the 1970s or 80s.
Skopje and Macedonia as a whole has a complex and diverse background in the region. The ethnic composition of the country is very diverse, and in recent decades after the fall of Yugoslavia, the country was the most pacifistic of the region, becoming a place of peace and inclusion. Following the worldwide effort to reconstruct the city of Skopje after the earthquake in 1963, the city was also known as the city of International Solidarity. These notions of identity come into direct conflict with recent nationalistic narratives which seek to reestablish the Macedonian identity by othering and by opposition to outsiders.
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My interests in Skopje relate to the larger discourse over national identity for the country of North Macedonia, including the recent Skopje 2014 Project in which the Macedonian nationalist populist political party VMRO-DPMNE reclad many of the older concrete buildings with classically inspired facades, often hybridizing the two styles in an eclectic hodgepodge of the two to redesign the city to look consistent with the western European image of a modern capital with deep
cultural and historic heritage. The new construction is cheaply executed, utilizing hollow plaster formwork on steel substructure, which alludes to the visual and narrative importance of architectural style, color, and ornament in the construction of a national image.
5 | Introduction
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TRANSFORMATION OF MACEDONIA
North Macedonia today is situated in the complex geopolitical climate of the Balkan region. Historically, Macedonia was an ancient kingdom on the periphery of Greece, and at one point was the dominant state of Hellenistic Greece. It also was a province of the early Roman Empire, a late Roman administrative unit, a province of the Byzantine Empire, and many others, giving it a complex historic and cultural identity entangled with others. Recent conflicts of identity with Greece have led to the Prespa Agreement in 2018 that renamed the country to North Macedonia after Greece disputed ownership of the cultural name which arguably might be considered under the umbrella of Greek cultural history. However, regions of Greek land extending to Thessaloniki on the Aegian Sea were historically Macedonian, making ownership over both the land and name a complex issue.
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7 | Introduction
0
100 km
Ancient Macedon 808 BCE
200 km
300 km
Roman Province of Macedonia 146 BCE
Byzantine Macedonia 789 CE
Ottoman Vardar Macedonia 1392 CE
Macedonia 1991 CE / North Macedonia 2019 CE
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INTERNATIONAL INFLUENCE
FRANCE
WASHINGTON DC
SKOPJE
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As part of my method, I studied and compared the cities of both Washington, DC, and Skopje, North Macedonia.
9 | Introduction
JAPAN
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COMPARING CAPITAL CORE FOOTPRINTS
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11 | Introduction
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COMPARING CAPITAL CORE BUILDINGS
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13 | Introduction
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CAPITOL BUILDING
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WASHINGTON, D.C. 1793-1824
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SKOPJE, N. MACEDONIA 2014
GOVERNMENT BUILDING
1791: L’enfant plan to create magnificent city free of colonial origins
1790: Residence act establishes DC at the confluence of Potomac and Anacostia rivers
1814: Burning of Washington in War of 1812. Whitehouse rebuilt
DC POPULATION
1800
1810
1820
1830
1840
1821: Greek Declaration of Independence in Macedonia by Emmanuel Pappas
SKOPJE, MK
ELECTRICITY
1790
ALUMINUM
WASHINGTON, DC
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TITLE 2 CITIES’ TIMELINE
OF MIDDL
E CLASS
WORLD GDP/CAPITA
SKOPJE POPULATION
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WEALTH
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US CIVIL WAR
1893: Permanent system of highways designed by Frederick Olmstead Sr.
1846: Retrocession of Virginia’s land
1902: establ Nation
1860
1870
GOLD RUSH
DAS KAPITAL
1850
1898 Potomac
1854: Theodoros Ziakas stages an uprising in Western Macedonia
1873: Completion of Üsküb—Selanik (now Skopje—Thessaloniki) railway
1880
VACCINES
1848: National Mall Development
1890
1900
1903: Hellenic Macedonian Committee formed to resist Bulgarian and Ottoman forces
1903: Ilinden Uprising threatens Ottoman control of Skopje
1908: Young Turk Revoluti establishes a constitution government, modernizing t Ottoman Emp
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1913: B end to
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1933: Mall Development Plan 1910: Commission of Fine Arts created to review designs for federal buildings
1910: Height of Buildings Act
1938: National Airport 1945: DC Redevelopment act clears SW DC to develop housing and offices
1924: National capital park commission established 1926: Public Buildings Act: Federal triangle, IRS building, Archives, etc
1910
Macedonian ed to resist nd Ottoman forces
en Uprising n control of Skopje
8: Young Turk Revolution tablishes a constitutional rnment, modernizing the Ottoman Empire 1913: Balkan wars brings an end to Ottoman control of Macedonia
1920
1930
GREAT DEPRESSION
1900
WWI
1902: McMillan Plan establishes federal core & National mall
1950: First Comprehen plan listing land use, ca beltway
1950: Population Peak, Migration from South b many black Americans
WWII
1898 Potomac river dredging
1940
1950
1
MICROCHIPS
anent system of esigned by lmstead Sr.
1941: Germany and Bulgaria occupy Macedonia during World War 2 1943: Entire Jewish population of Skopje deported to Nazi gas chambers at Treblinka 1944: Red army liberates Balkans from Nazi occupation
1962: Flooding of Va
1944 Yugoslav Socialist Republic of Macedonia formed and became part of Yugoslavia
1963: A m earthquake des Skopje’s building 200,00
1965: Ken co redevel
1918: Kingdom of Serbs, croats and Slovenes formed
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1968: Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
1970: SOM masterplans for Park Service, constitution gardens, etc. 1985: New comprehensive plan extends concerns to a regional level
, Great brings s
ardar river
1980
1990
CHERNOBYL
THE MOON
1970
2001: 9/11 lead to installation of security measures 2009: CapitalSpace masterplan outlining parks 2014: Height act amendment allowing rooftop occupation
2000
2010
9/11
1976: First phase of Metrorail system opens to public
BERLIN WALL
1973: DC given its own mayor and ownership over land; NCPC over federal land
nsive apital
1960
2001: Memorials and Museums masterplan
1991 Yugoslavia dissolved; Republic of Macedonia declares independence and names Skopje its capital
magnitude 6.1 stroys 80% of gs and leaves 00 homeless
1993: Macedonia joins the UN
nzo Tange wins UN ompetition for the lopment of Skopje
2014: Skopje 2014 project financed to give the city a more classical appeal
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2018: Prespa Agreement renames country to the Republic of North Macedonia
Superimposed Columns from Washington and Skopje
FRAMEWORK
In this chapter, I lay out the tools that I use in my analysis of ideology in the built environment. Many of these come from different academic fields including philosophy, anthropology, art history, literature, and of course architecture among others.
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IDEOLOGY
“Ideology represents the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence. Ideology has a material existence because ideology always exists in an apparatus, and its practice, or practices (such as architecture).”1 1
Althusser, Louis. Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays. Trans. Ben Brewster. New York: Monthly Review P, 2001.
IDEOLOGY
INVISIBLE
BUILT
BUILDINGS, FACADES, INFRASTRUCTURE
STRUCTURE, INSULATION, MEP
UNBUILT
POLITICS, CULTURE
PROGRAM, FUNCTION, SPACE PLANNING
IDEOLOGY
VISIBLE
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Right: Surveillance camera mounted on the Lincoln Memorial, Washington, DC Photo by Benjamin Wang
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The way in which a community’s self-understanding is influenced by or imported from foreign sources.
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THE PIZZA EFFECT TITLE
- Coined by Agehananda Bharati (Syracuse University, 1970) Pizza was not always the way we know it today; prior to World War 1, it was a plain flatbread which was modified and reimported into Italy by Americans traveling abroad after the war. Now, pizza is considered an innately Italian thing, and the culture is in some ways defined by this alien cultural artifact. The same can occur with architecture, especially in government buildings in capital cities and the role that these buildings play in national identity and narrative building. With the example of Skopje, importing classicism and monumentality helps to legitimize the culture and government in a western European tradition, however it is cliche and void of true meaning to Macedonia, in a similar way to how Macedonian Fried Chicken copied Kentucky Fried Chicken in the United States.
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Skopje Customs Office
25 | Framework
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PERVERSION OF CLASSICAL STYLE
1. The Faithful Original: Colored Roman Building made from structural stone
2. The Copy: Idealized with white coloration and renaissance era space arrangement. Palladio’s Villa Rotunda
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Using Jean Baudrillard’s framework from Simulacra and Simulation, I outline the process under which revivals of classical architectural styles have adapted, misinterpreted, and changed an original classicism into something totally different that we see today. Remarkably however, the sign value for classically inspired aesthetics
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3. The Lie: Columns become part of the facade, but are no longer used for purely structural purposes. San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane
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4. The Simulation: False structural cladding is put up to create the illusion of a classical stone column. MEPSO Building.
clearly remains for most who do not see these subtler shifts without the training and schooling of an architect. This begs the question, are we the ones who are wrong? Tastes are subjective and transient, but if the public approves of a certain aesthetic sensibility, should we follow that?
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DESIRE FOR “PURE”
Lincoln Memorial, Washington DC, Henry Bacon, 1911
Villa Savoye, Poissy, Le Corbusier, 1931
White
Structural Expression
Ornament Expresses Structure Orthogonal Form
Directionally Oriented forms
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Gridded Regular Composition
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29 | Framework
Architects have long sought to distill form and expression of ornament to an ideal of what is formally or ideologically pure. Different expressions of this purity such as Classicism and Modernism initially look very different; however, the things which make them “pure” are shared between the two, revealing the disparate styles in fact share much in common. Additionally, history has shown that our ideas of white, monochrome pure architecture were in fact not what the original architects of antiquity designed at all. Rather, classical architecture was colorful. What would our world look like if this was reflected in our buildings today?
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THE DETOURNEMENT
Asger Jorn, The Disquieting Duckling
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31 | Framework
The Detournement is a technique developed by the French Letterist and Situationist groups in the 1950s which entailed subverting two artistic means of production by layering them upon each other; the juxtaposition of the two would create new meaning and artistic value that was not inherent in either alone. While a member of the Situationist International, Asger Jorn painted by means of “modifying” and “disfiguring” as seen in Le Canard Inquietant or The Disquieting Duckling. His work with the Situationists uses extant paintings as found objects and modifies them. In the case of Le Canard Inquietant: a traditional painting of a cabin in the countryside, which Jorn would have found at a flea market, exemplifying undesired traditional art and the excessive waste produced by commodity culture. Jorn’s addition is a large, gestural, and colorful duck, alluding to the children’s story “the Ugly Duckling” in a playful manner. Like other modifications that Jorn produced, The Disquieting Duckling is an example of his vandalistic interests, with the goal of at once destroying a piece of traditional and hegemonic art and creating a new one. This idea comes from the Situationist International’s “detournement,” in which the combining and reuse of existing elements undermines the importance of each while creating new meaning in their combination. The Situationists used detournement to bring value back to kitsch and folk art, asserting that it holds as much if not more value than esteemed “high art” crowned by art institutions which the group was intent in disrupting.”
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An Egyptian obelisk at appropriate scale compared to the Washington Monument, inspired by an obelisk but scaled monumentally
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TRACING A GENEALOGY
“Macedonian White House” Macedonian Government Building, 2014
“A grand palace for the president” James Hoban White House, 1792
Using Foucault’s genealogical method of a “history of the present,” I have traced the design intents that the Macedonian Government Building emerged from, tracing its lineage to the architecture of antiquity through a convoluted route of influences. Lawrence Boyer | 38
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“A stately Georgian Mansion in the Palladian Style” Richard Cassels Leinster House, 1745
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“Reliving and perfecting the grandeur of Antiquity” Andrea Palladio Barchessa Padua, 1550
“Firmness, Commodity, Delight” Temple of Athena, Paestum, 6th c. BCE
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EVALUATING CONTEMPORARY CLASSICISM
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41 | Framework
Classical Architecture has been codified in architectural theory by a number of historians since the fascination with it that began in the Renaissance period. The primary way of understanding, reading, and creating classicism is through matching proportions to existing buildings that used the same proportions, often Greek or Roman ruins. Thus, one can evaluate a building today and its success in the execution of classicism by comparing it to canonical classicism. In this case, I used Vignola’s orders to compare case study buildings in both Washington, DC, and Skopje to evaluate if these buildings historically reflect the proportions of the classical family that they claim to be part of.
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COLUMNS OF THE CAPITOL (DC)
10r
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43 | Framework
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FEDERAL RESERVE (DC)
7r
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UNION STATION (DC)
9r
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45 | Framework
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SUPREME COURT (DC)
10r
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TRIUMPHAL ARCH OF MACEDONIA
9r
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47 | Framework
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FEDERAL RESERVE (DC)
8r
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MACEDONIAN GOVERNMENT BUILDING
9r
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49 | Framework
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FEDERAL RESERVE (DC)
6r
DC WAR MEMORIAL
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WASHINGTON, D.C. 1924
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SKOPJE, N. MACEDONIA. 2014
STATUE OF TWO LOVERS STAT
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53 | Framework
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WASHINGTON, DC TITLE
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WASHINGTON DC: MATERIAL
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59 | Washington, DC
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MICRO HISTORY
Early Images of Washington, DC
specific image of the city at the cost of authenticity. Then today, how can we identify what is truly authentic that we see in our cities? Or does the distinction matter? To answer this, we must look at the intent behind such projects and examine the actors involved and their motivations.
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Most cities have existed and evolved for many years to arrive at the point where they are currently, with the lives of many spent devoted to changing the city. Each place has a nuanced and detailed micro history that can be seen through the layering of culture, architecture, space usage, etc. However, large scale planning practices overwrite these traces of history and individuality, preventing long term memory of the past and the complex history to a city. This effect is called organized amnesia, and serves an end to impose a narrative of urban and cultural identity and establish a
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IMPOSED MACRO HISTORY
The National Mall, Washington, DC
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Research Present
Cass Gilbert, Architect of the Supreme Court Senator Elihu Root
Chief Justice William Howard Taft portrayed as a student at Yale University English crown, a Pope’s miter, and a Bishop’s crosier
Supreme Court West Pediment
Liberty enthroned
Order
Authority
Robert Aitken, sculptor of the pediment
Research Past
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Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes
Chief Justice John Marshall holding Roman scrolls An urn, mosaic tables, and an oil lamp
Supreme Court East Pediment
Hare (fable) Tortoise opposite
Studying and pondering of judgments
Settling state disputes through enlightened judgment
Law enforcement teaching youth of right and wrong
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Confucius Solon of Athens
Maritime Functions
Tempering justice with mercy
Moses and the 10 commandments
Fundamental and supreme power of the court Tortoise (fable) Hare opposite
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Peace protecting Genius (child) with olive tree
Printer with Press Foundry workers pouring metal Textile worker spinning wheel
Young boy catching fish
Industry
Apotheosis of Democracy, House of Representatives West Pediment
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Ram and Lamb
Woman and child harvesting field
Agriculturist with ox
Man with reaper and youth
Agriculture
America’s present & future
Progression of Civilization, Senate East Pediment
Wheat
Soldier prepared to draw sword
Children exploring and aspiring Merchant with cotton and bags of coins Schoolmaster and child
Mechanic with cog and hammer
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America’s past
Rising sun America holds a laurel wreath and an oak wreath, signifying military and civic success Eagle, representing Lumberjack clearing the power and empire forest, settling on the land Native American hunter with serpent
Native American Grave
Native American mother and child
Crying Native American Chief
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The Committee of Five, Jefferson Memorial
Benjamin Franklin
John Adams
Five signers of the Declaration of Independence
Thomas Jefferson
Roger Sherman
Robert Livingston
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Man on horseback guarding peace
Pediment at National Archives
Man with harp sings “Song of Achievement”
Man carries torch of enlightenment
Arts of Peace
Woman carries olive (peace) and palm (victory) branches
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Destiny on a throne with two eagles Two genii bear the fires of patriotism
Arts of War
Child holding scroll of history
Two lovers, the romance of history
Warrior carries swords of defeated enemies
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US CAPITOL BUILDING
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71 | Washington, DC
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US SENATE
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US HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
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75 | Washington, DC
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J. EDGAR HOOVER FBI BUILDING
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NATIONAL ARCHIVES
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79 | Washington, DC
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HART SENATE OFFICE BUILDING
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FEDERAL AVIATION ADMINISTRATION
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83 | Washington, DC
ROBERT C. WEAVER DEPARTMENT OF HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT
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85 | Washington, DC
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CONSTRUCTING THE INVISIBLE How urban interfaces communicate ideology in Washington DC Renee Crown Honors Thesis Essay
In this paper, I analyze the ways the built environment acts as an apparatus of ideology for the United States federal government and how the urban conditions within the capital city of Washington DC are an interface between networks of power and the people of the city. The aim of this collective work is to provide a methodology to understand how ideas and authority are transmitted by building, resulting in the identity of a nation created by the architecture of its capital city. Additionally, it explores how architecture and architectural representation is complicit in the constructing and dissemination of narrative.
the visual and narrative importance of architectural style, color, and ornament in the construction of a national image.
Washington DC has a similarly duality of two primary architectural styles when it comes to government buildings: Classical and Brutalist, with some hybridity between the two. In this essay, I focus on ordinary, leftover spaces within the city, which I describe as urban interfaces, and how these have become a key point of interaction between people and the city. Urban interfaces ahve real implications on the bodily relationships between the individual, building, government, and country by connecting us with larger power networks inherent in the city and the government that resides there. In introducing the term of the urban interface to the discourse of urban bio-politics, I am to further the understanding of city politics and the role architecture plays in it in a new way which does not focus merely on the building, but on the built environment in its entirety.
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This essay is complimentary to a larger research project with the School of Architecture at Syracuse University titled Delaminating the Real: Unpacking the Physical Expression of Ideology in the Government Buildings of Skopje, North Macedonia. As part of my research methodology, I visited both Washington DC and Skopje to conduct field work, interviews, and photojournalism to understand the built ideologies and narratives of these capital cities. My interest in Washington is largely personal, having spent much time there when I was young, but is also of great interest architecturally and politically, being the center of politics in the United States and a large player internationally. Meanwhile, Eastern Europe has recently received much attention in architectural discourse with the 2018 exhibition, Toward a Concrete Utopia: Architecture in Yugoslavia, 1948–1980 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. While this discussion examined the Yugoslav era concrete Brutalism prevalent across the region, my interests in Skopje relate to the recent Skopje 2014 Project in which the Macedonian nationalist populist political party VMRO-DPMNE reclad many of the older concrete buildings with classically inspired facades, often hybridizing the two styles in an eclectic hodgepodge of the two to redesign the city to look consistent with the western European image of a modern capital with deep cultural and historic heritage. The new construction is cheaply executed, utilizing hollow plaster formwork on steel substructure, which alludes to
Delaminating the Real
PREFACE
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Road Block leading to the US Capitol Building, Washington, DC
their interactions with the ideology of the city. Focusing on these leftovers shows us the embedded relationships that are omnipresent across the city, even in many places which might seem ordinary or innocent.
The District of Columbia exemplifies many of the ways that power is materialized in the built environment through visible methods such as architectural design, and more hidden ones inherent in space planning, organization, and biopolitics. Political realities combined with federal planning efforts such as the National Mall, and infrastructure such as the Metro, streets, and sidewalk system contribute toward an understanding of the sovereignty of the federal government. Buildings hold the physical things of government (computers, papers, people, etc.) while performing ideology through their façades (nationalism, spectacle, historical references, lineage, etc.), converting power into form.3 While buildings, monuments, sculptures, and other spatial objects create the image4 and landscape of the city via spectacle, these highly visible forms are not the only aspect of the built environment that sculpt our relationships with the city. The ordinary, leftover spaces between and around buildings sculpt the actualized experience of an individual in their everyday life, and affect the way that people encounter and perceive buildings, space, and their government. People place themselves within the ideological
1 Goran Therborn, Cities of Power. 2 Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media. 3 Lewis Mumford, quoted by Goran Therborn in Cities of Power. 4 Kevin Lynch, The Image of The City.
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Power needs public representation to be recognized, respected, awed, and obeyed.1 It would make sense then that individuals, companies, and governments with power turn toward construction as a physical means of cultivating and reinforcing their position of authority and their relationship to others. While many construction and development projects have the outward goal of increasing livability and bettering the image of a city, the design of these projects tells a different story about social, political, and economic hierarchies in our cities.2 The built reality around us contributes towards an understanding of one’s position in relation to others and the governing power of the city. By communicating these relationships, urban design and architecture functions as a complex, hidden apparatus that creates and reinforces power relationships, and the resulting built environment of the city is an interface that links the individual pedestrian and the powerful state, allowing the state to impart a message or idea about itself to its citizenry to create and reinforce a power hierarchy and tell a curated story about itself and our national identity. In this essay, I focus on ordinary, leftover spaces in the city and use the concept of ‘urban interfaces’ to better understand how power is materialized in, through, and alongside the built environment. As I define the term, urban interfaces are built aspects of the city other than buildings that link people to buildings and government through
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URBAN INTERFACES
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network of a city through the urban interfaces of infrastructural and civic spaces: the sinew between buildings that links people both physically and socially to buildings and government through their interactions with the ideology embedded in the urban environment.
Architects tend to look at and discuss buildings as having the strongest impact on the urban setting, leaving many other aspects of the built environment out of the discussion about the creation of national image and ideology building. However, the non-architectural (or non-building) aspects of the built environment such as public space and plazas, sculptures, monuments, roads and walkways, fall under the purview of government compared to most buildings whose design and stewardship are shared between public and private owners. Design intent can be attributed to both designer and patron, but in the case of civic, public, and infrastructural construction, the patron is the government of the city, and in the case of Washington DC, the federal government of the United States. So, while these residual elements of the city may not be as glamorous as the buildings that we admire, they play a crucial role in our day to day lives and provide a clearer message of government ideology and its dissemination through the interface of the built environment. My method for this essay and examining the city of Washington DC explains and analyzes urban interfaces via five attributes through which they communicate through and contribute toward our
understanding of our place in the city. These attributes are: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
Surface Scale Separation Signage Surveilance
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1. SURFACE
Fig. 1: Street wall along New Jersey avenue NW terminating on the US Capitol.
becomes significant. For instance, the Capitol building in Washington is not only the endpoint of the National Mall, but is seemingly omnipresent as one moves throughout the city by aligning with a number of intersecting diagonal streets, placing it outside of the ordinary streetwall (in addition to being placed atop a hill). Washington’s cardinal grid plan is oriented based off the capitol, with its numbered vertical streets originating in each direction from Capitol Street (North or South), and the horizontal lettered streets again originating from Capitol Street (East) effectively placing the capitol at the center of the city, (Fig. 2) forcing acknowledgement of and reference to the building in every quadrant of the
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Surfaces are the primary method the built environment engages with its occupants. Surfaces are not spaces but define spaces; they are not just spatial but aesthetic and material as well. These can be roads, sidewalks, lawns, plazas, etc. We engage with surfaces by occupying them. While just about any plane in space could be considered a surface, they become particularly significant in our understanding of space in certain contexts. In a city, the primary horizontal surface is the street, and the primary vertical one is the street wall comprised of building facades (Fig. 1). Together, the two form a rectangular volume of space which pedestrians occupy, and anything that breaks this logic thus
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city even when it is no longer visible. Beyond these, eight diagonal avenues1 intersect with the building, providing a total of eleven different, major roads in which one sees the dome interrupt the view down the center of the street. Aside from a few major governmental or cultural buildings, most major street intersections are used to create public parks in Washington, which are a hub of activity for neighborhoods, commercial businesses, and sometimes access to infrastructure such as bus stops or Metro stations. Another notable type of surface as interface is the plaza, of which there are many in Washington. Most plazas and courtyards created by federal buildings in Washington are enclosed by and belong to that single building which gives up area from its land
parcel to create space in front of or inside of the building that makes it initially viewed from a distance along the street, requiring a procession up towards to enter. Some of these plazas are publicly accessible such as the one in front of the Lincoln Memorial, yet others such as the East Capitol Plaza (Fig. 3) are frequently partitioned off from public access. Public space was part of the plan of Washington and an important aspect of its image since its inception, especially because of the significance of the government giving land back to the people, with an explicit plan for no development or construction.2 The key distinction between raw, unused residual land and manicured urban space is how this space has been co-opted by planners and government for the purpose of spectacle, by virtue of scale, or by
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1 Pennsylvania Ave NW, New Jersey Ave NW, Delaware Ave NE, Maryland Ave NE, Pennsylvania Ave SE, New Jersey Ave SE, Delaware Ave SW, and Maryland Ave SW 2 Frederick Gutheim in Worthy of the Nation.
Fig. 2: Map of the National Mall and converging streets on the Capitol building. Cultural buildings (blue) and government buildings (red).
The National Mall is a more dramatic example, shared between the Capitol building, Lincoln memorial, Washington Monument, a dozen museums and other buildings, but serves a function akin to a lawn for the nation: a kind of extravagance or excess put on public display to suggest the sovereignty of the nation. Its lack of trees also serves to create an uninterrupted view across the two mile long stretch of the Mall, focusing attention along the buildings at the extremedies, particularly the Capitol
which also sits elevated upon a hill. When it comes to people’s use, public surfaces have real impact on the way that socialization and recreation occurs in the public setting, particularly with the National Mall being the core of tourism and educational enrichment through the Smithsonian Institute museums. Cultural and government buildings become a ubiquitous backdrop for everyday life such as a walk along the Mall, protests or marches in front of the Lincoln Memorial, Inaugurations along the steps of the Capitol, and many more.
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placing buildings of governmental or cultural importance along these spaces, making them urban interfaces between the government and people of the city.3
3 Kirk Savage, Monument Wars.
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Right: Fig. 3: Plaza to the east of the Capitol building.
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The experience of an individual in an urban setting is belittling when buildings are so large. Urban artifacts such as monuments, sculptures, and memorials serve a similar function when the natural comparison between the scale of oneself is compared to the scale of the environment and other objects within it.1 The number of monuments depicting a person that are smaller than life-size are few; smaller sculptures are typically reserved for art museums and not for an exterior urban environment. Thus, the stone, marble, and bronze inhabitants of the streets make us seem misplaced and small in the grand scale of the city, especially placed atop steps, pedestals, horses, or thrones where they tower above us. Each of these artifacts play a similar interfacing role, utilizing scale as a means of juxtaposing people and their environment.
1 Kevin Lynch, The Image of the City. 2 Theo Deutinger, Handbook of Tyrrany.
Of course, buildings are the largest urban artifact in a city - a building that wanted to conceal its size might be constructed underground to prohibit the comparison of one’s body to the building, however most buildings do not do this. Their composition in the city plan creates a system of roads, in the case of Washington with a planned set of hierarchies of scale. The wide avenues in the District measure 160 feet across in comparison to the avenues of Manhattan which are 100 feet wide, which seems even more dramatic given the 130 foot commercial building height restriction in Washington, serving to underscore the colossal 288 foot height of the capitol dome. Notably, the wide streets are wider than the buildings are allowed
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The familiarity and celebrity of most statues of public figures negates the uncanniness of their size, particularly when at an accessible height to interact with. For instance, the Albert Einstein memorial on Constitution Avenue depicts Einstein sitting on steps, allowing city goers to sit in his lap. Traces of touch are visible in the bright, polished surfaces of his right thigh, the tip of his nose, and his hands, which tells us about the places people might touch to feel connection with each other or the memorial in an attempt to humanize its grand size.2 Similar signs of wear can be seen on notable corners of
buildings such as the National Gallery of Art at chest level where visitors touch a sharp edge of the building, concrete benches polished smooth in certain spots of more frequent use, or on various handrails throughout the capital. These signals tell us about the physical interaction people have with urban interfaces and about the way people occupy public spaces and touch the city over a longer period that transcends a single moment in time. Now, not only has physical scale made individuals feel small in the city, but a temporal scale in which the government and durable artifacts of its sovereignty such as its buildings and the city have existed long before us, and will continue to exist for long after us.
Delaminating the Real
2. SCALE
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to be tall.3 The system of streets and avenues remains faithful to Pierre L’enfant’s original design “to admit… 80 feet for a carriage way, 30 feet on either side for a walk under a double row of trees, and 10 feet between the trees and houses.”4 Washington was designed to be a thoroughfare for travel at its founding as well as a hub of domestic and foreign political activity, a destination for tourism and a spectacle that created a symbolic image of a powerful nation. The extravagantly wide avenues contribute to this image as well as the urban forest that has continued to greenify the city for centuries along its streets and in its parks, inseparable from its self-image just as much as its monuments and memorials.5 The wide sidewalks and tree cover allow the sidewalks to be grand yet accommodating to the pedestrian, especially during the humid and hot summers in which shade is a necessity.
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In accordance with the popularity of the City Beautiful movement in Washington and America at large in the 1890s and 1900s, the urban environment became a hybrid of landscape and urbanism, which creates a tension with the original notion of scale by obscuring large spaces with trees and other foliage. Trees such as the Cherry Blossoms6 that
line the Tidal basin not only bring nature into the urban area, but create a huge tourism draw in the spring during blossoming season and the corresponding festival. While these landscaped areas diminish the grand scale of public space, the contrast emphasizes and makes more dramatic the vast open spaces such as the National Mall. Photos and postcards alike depict the capital’s monuments and tree canopy. These planning practices have created a city that is an intentional and sustained response to concerns of the city’s visual appeal but also an effort to impart impressions of the government, including spectacle or patriotic pride in part due to the impressiveness of the attributes the city has to offer its residents.
3 Height of Buildings Act (1910). The height restriction is 130 feet tall on commercial streets, 90 feet on residential, and 160 feet for parts of Pennsylvania Ave. There are buildings that exceed this limit that were constructed prior, many of which are also cultural buildings such as the National Cathedral, Old Post Office building (currently Trump International Hotel), or the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. 4 Pierre L’enfant, quoted by Frederick Gutheim in Worthy of the Nation. P 23. 5 Kevin Lynch, The Image of the City. 6 Gifted to Washington DC from Japan in 1912, though the idea is credited to Eliza Scidmore who proposed planting cherry trees along the waterfront to the Office of Public Buildings and Grounds (National Park Service).
One’s separation from the built environment creates a hierarchy between different people, such as the public, government employees, or other “authorized personnel.” In a city where security clearances have gradually become commonplace and nearly everyone works directly or indirectly for the government, there needs to be other ways of stratifying influence and importance, and this is accomplished through access and lack thereof. The occupation of surface in the city is contextualized through separation: what spaces can you be in, versus which can you merely be near? This distinction was not always as dramatic as it exists today, especially in the formative years of Washington, but its sustained urban growth1 through the age of Internet and terrorism events has led to many security measures being implemented and a reduction in the public accessibility of government and cultural buildings. Famously, several roads around the White House such as the one separating the Ellipse from the President’s Park were formerly open to both pedestrian and vehicular traffic, though in recent years this area has been reduced to restricted vehicle access only, and sometimes even no public access whatsoever.
Separation and distance are complementary: distance can accomplish separation and make buildings inaccessible. The East Capitol Plaza (Fig. 3) not only creates separation of the public realm of the street or sidewalk and the Capitol through temporary fences placed around the outside of the plaza, but the scale of the plaza creates a separation of space between the street, other buildings, and the Capitol. The fences placed around
1 Growth of the city has led to other urban conditions such as an inverted urban density where many glass high rise buildings have been constructed in Crystal City across the Potomac River from Washington to avoid the height restrictions in the District, as well as the first government data centers being built just outside of the belt loop highway in Tyson’s Corner, allegedly just outside of nuclear blast radius as a response to fears during the Cold War. 2 Theo Deutinger, Handbook of Tyranny.
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Fences, barriers, and walls are frequent among government buildings, selectively limiting the type of access one has to a building.2 Barriers of
concrete are moreso a safety measure to prevent automobile crashes into buildings, or proximity to the building in case of an explosion or other form of terrorism. Though they prevent visibility, they are often short, and one can see or even jump over them, and sometimes they also take on an additional functionality of planters. Fences deter and prevent pedestrian access to buildings but preserve visible access, typically significant to still see the building such as the White House, Capitol (Fig. 3) or Treasury building, (Fig. 4) which express ideology visibly through the historical myth embedded in the facade design. Finally, walls limit not only access into a building, but prevent visibility as well. Though there are no walls currently surrounding federal buildings, frequently the ground floor of federal buildings acts like a wall, having the fewest windows and allowing the least visibility inward from the street.
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3. SEPARATION
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the Capitol in the image are about halfway between the street and the façade, still allowing one to walk up towards the building and occupy its plaza but not become intimate with the building. This distance prevents interaction and public occupancy of the building, forcing pedestrians to be mere witnesses to government and democracy rather than participants in it.
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Streets are also functionally tools of separation , though the size of the street and ease of crossing it affects this as well. While one might easily jaywalk across a quiet minor street
rendering that barrier insignificant, crossing the wide and traffic heavy avenues is a task and is a more significant barrier, leading informal neighborhoods to often be defined by the larger streets from a practical standpoint. These areas are also dictated by proximity to Metro stations. While streets are considered a type of infrastructure, vicinity to large streets is not always a desirable effect, and their placement has real consequences on communities - their ability to become lines and create separations give them the ability to act politically within the spatial environment of the city.
Fig. 4: Plaza to the north of the treasury building.
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4. SIGNAGE
Fig. 5: Door signage at EPA building, Federal Triangle.
are reinforced through other means such as barriers about what space is public and what is restricted to some “other” group such as government officials, police, or another authority. Exclusion of public occupancy happens in “private” spaces such as residences, but visual access is also typically
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Signage verbally conveys information about bodily control in space and dictates a level of control over our actions and a desired level of conformity. With respect to government buildings, national parks, memorials and monuments, signs most commonly communicate messages that
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restricted; what makes restricted civic space different is that it is plainly visible, and still belongs to the public realm, yet the public is not allowed to occupy it.1 For example, the Treasury building adjacent to the White House (Fig. 4) has a large, inaccessible plaza in front of it that has become functionally useless aside from visual ceremony because of barriers and signage. The message “do not enter” tells us that we are not welcome in the places of our government’s operation, or even their proximity. The block formed by the Treasury, White House, Executive Office building, and the President’s Park occupy the area of some 15-20 blocks. However, it is nearly entirely surrounded by security, barriers, signage, and surveillance preventing any public access and creating a spectacle of power superimposed upon the architectural performance of classicism, tradition, and historic lineage. The bio-politics of government adjacent civic spaces reinforce the message of power and authority of the government. Other restrictive signage can tell contradictory messages with our understanding of architecture and expectations for interacting with and occupying it. For instance, at one entrance to the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) headquarters in the Federal Triangle (Fig. 5), a set of double doors bears the sign “this is not an entrance” despite being a functional door, which also happens to be made of glass, allowing us to see that not only does it lead inside, but into what appears to be a major hallway. Peculiarly,
the sign and intended use of the building conflict with one another but demonstrates the tendency of the state to intervene into controlling the way its buildings are used and the way its citizens move through, interact with, occupy, buildings. Signage serves in this way as an interface with government’s power over the individual by restricting access and making interventions into the built environment that reinforce an image of sovereignty over the city and its people.
Another example of many more: a sign at the Jefferson Memorial which reads “please respect the memorial and help preserve the atmosphere of calm, tranquility, and reverence. Consequently, no demonstrations allowed.” This bears particular irony given that Thomas Jefferson was a founding father of the country and was also a believer in decentralized government and personal freedoms, and that the First Amendment allows for free exercise of speech and peaceful assembly. Though it is not closely situated to the Capitol or White House, one could reasonably think Jefferson would in fact be an advocate for such a building being used for demonstration. These superimpositions of different historical meanings and are fraught with contradiction, having been built up over time and typically in response to specific events that were used to justify changes in the way government allows citizens to participate in public space. Ultimately, signage behaves as the government correcting errata in the ways of the past.
1 Albena Yaneva, Five Ways to Make Architecture Political.
1 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish. 2 Slavoj Zizek, Mapping Ideology.
technology facing outward onto the Mall, making the obelisk the District’s super tall guard tower that doubles as a memorial and urban icon.
In my week of travel to Washington, I visited and photographed the facades of 79 different federal buildings, their facades, entrances and exits, security cameras, guards, and signage, and was turned down at the door of any that I attempted to enter. There is no doubt in my mind that I did not draw some sort of attention to myself despite my touristic complacency and curiosity. However, within the first five minutes of photographing the Macedonian Government building in Skopje, I was approached while outside and told I could not continue to take photos in that area. Whereas the Macedonian security relied on an active expression of security, Washington’s security is systematically and passively integrated into its image of power and authority along with the many other means of expression outlined in the rest of this paper. Static images as well as physical spatial conditions control behavior in a highly efficient manner that does not require the kind of physical force needed by other systems such as I encountered in North Macedonia. Surveillance raises questions of our relationship with our government, whether we are partnered with it, or have become subjects of its power. However, publicly displayed surveillance measures move beyond the kind of invisible surveillance of internet usage, voice calls, data
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Surveillance is often thought about simply in terms of the objects surveilled or the subjects who survey. Thinking in terms of urban interfaces by contrast asks us to consider the connective relations between those two positions and the ways that people in the city exist in a city with knowledge of their potential surveillance. Especially in capital cities, surveillance of government buildings and civic spaces is plainly visible, with the purported goal of protecting state interests, national security, and maintaining public safety. However, surveillance fundamentally reduces privacy, and can alter one’s behavior especially when surveillance is a performative display. Surveillance is not just about being watched, but is also about a one-way power relationship with a mysterious other in which the party being surveyed does not hold the power.1 You will never see who is on the other side of a camera or if they are even watching you at any particular moment, but they have full power over your privacy and visibility in that moment.2 With monochrome camera mountings on nearly every corner of every federal building (Fig. 6), security booth, doorway, monument, and many more invisible, it would be hard not to notice and feel as if you are being watched anywhere within a three block radius of the National Mall where most federal buildings reside. In a recent renovation of the Washington monument, one of two windows on each face at the top were replaced with security imaging
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5. SURVEILLANCE
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Fig. 6: Three surveillance cameras mounted on the roof of the Herbert Hoover building.
collection, travel, and motion information that we can willfully ignore and that happen in the background without our notice. We may not all read the terms and conditions, privacy policy, or monitor what data we share online, but it is hard to ignore the many cameras that make up the built street scape in our cities. With national security on the line, these cameras alone are doubtfully the only security in place to prevent attacks or espionage, but instead serve a visual purpose to be visible and performative of power and the omnipresence of the government eye.
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CONCLUSION
Security Perimeter around the Old Executive Office Building, Washington, DC
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The spatial environment of the city is complex but designed in every detail from the street, sidewalks, plazas, trees, statues, and other leftover space. Buildings are not the sole actor of outdoor ideology, because ideology can be found everywhere, especially in cities of political importance and control. Particularly in a government city such as Washington DC, the patron of urban planning and design is the government itself, and while the government is said to serve the people, it must also serve to preserve itself and its image to retain its power. In Washington, nearly every aspect of the built environment and the design of the city’s public spaces contributes toward a national image, an image of the city and its role as the capital and serves a larger narrative about government power, self identity, and national belonging, and this can be seen through the consistent attention paid to the design of its urban interfaces which gives a thematic and visual coherence to the city’s image. Particularly with a national capital, self image is a way that a city and government tells a story about itself: an invented and curated history. We can look to the built environment as an apparatus of government and its designs as an interface with the people of the city, understanding how government negotiates its relationship with its citizens as subjects of its designs, power, law, and of its city. Thinking in terms of interfaces has helped me understand the street scape as a complex web of ideology that extends beyond the building alone. In my main thesis and research of the
city of Skopje, it has also enabled me to identify further points of influence that the built environment has had upon people through city planning, infrastructural projects, aesthetics and ornament, and architecture, and how these all play a role in the way government constructs a narrative about itself and an image of the country, government, cultural identity, and self-history. None of these aspects are as certain or objective as they are often represented as; history, selfimage, and narrative are all constructs of the groups that are in power, and ultimately, the environment of the city, its architecture, ideology networks, and urban interfaces tell us more about intent and the true message being told rather than the one that is outwardly told to us.
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SKOPJE, NORTH MACEDONIA TITLE
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SKOPJE: MATERIAL
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The Skopje 2014 project reclad many existing Modernist buildings in new facades with ornamentation inspired by classical architectural styles. However, classical architecture exists still today because of its durable material composition, typically a stone of some type that was carved.
led to its creation. What will happen when these facades crumble? What will emerge from underneath, and what, if anything, will be put back over it?
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QUALITY OF CONSTRUCTION
Today’s cheap and fast fabrication in Skopje utilize hollow formwork made of plaster, styrofoam, and steel sub-structure. After not even 10 years, the plaster is molding, chipping, and wearing away, leading to questions of durability, not only of the material and buildings, but of the ideology that
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Above: MEPSO Building; Right: Archaeological Museum
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OLD NARRATIVE: MODERNIST FUTURE
NEW NARRATIVE: CLASSICAL PAST
REALITY
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CREATING LEGITIMACY
Skopje, North Macedonia 2014
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The Triumphal Arch is a recognizable architectural form that has been reduced to an idiomatic expression. Initially a Roman construction in cities that were conquered by the empire during its expansion for a procession through, many original Roman arches are scattered across Europe and tell a story about where Romans had once conquered centuries ago. Today, the form has been co-opted by more recent governments to legitimize history and their sovereignty in their cities. Everyone has one, and thus they have become generic and empty symbols.
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London, England; 1830
Pyongyang, North Korea; 1982
New York City; 1892
New Delhi, India; 1931
Brussels, Belgium; 1880
Paris, France; 1836
St. Petersburg, Russia; 1829
Vientiane, Laos; 1968
Rome, Italy; 82
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TRIUMPHAL ARCH OF MACEDONIA
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CENTRAL POST OFFICE
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ELECTRICITY TRANSMISSION SYSTEM OPERATOR
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TELECOMMUNICATIONS CENTER
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FABRICATION
The following chapter elaborates on models of various types that I constructed for this project. Some of these served me as a learning tool to better understand elements of the city, others are a means of critique of the appropriation of style and aesthetics, and others are projective works which seek to test and study legibility, meaning, and satire in the built environment. I do not seek or propose any of these as a design solution so much as a series of studies which complimented my research process.
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PROJECT SCHEDULE
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Alignment with Traditional Aesthetic Tastes
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STUDYING THROUGH MODELS
Legibility of Meaning
Photos by Benjamin Wang
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Model Making has allowed me to explore the tools of a designer and how these are both powerful yet restricted in terms of communicating meaning, narrative, and political ideas. Ultimately, architects, designers, and politicians alike are complicit in the dissemination of ideology. As a collection, these models fall on a spectrum of legibility and also aesthetic value. However, as each gains attributes, it also loses other value.
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TOPIC MAP
Etymology
Karl Marx Louis Althusser Slavoj Žižek Guy Debord Marshall McLuhan
False Consciousness
Base Superstructure
Collective Unconscious
Carl
Apparatus Pervert’s Guide to Ideology
They Live John Carpenter
Commodity
Society of the Spectacle
Interface
Scopic Regimes of Modernity Jay Martin
Lacan
intrapsychic
UVA
Extrastatecraft Keller Easterling
Prac Hollow Cladding Solid Truth Reality Labor Material Economics
Construction Built environment Ideology
Infrastructure Soft
Theo Architecture
Hard Cultural Political
Education Ideology networks
Entertainment Art
Hist
Spectacle
Identity
Geopolitics of Spectac Natalie Koch Dennis Cosgrove
Seeing like a State James C. Scott
Urb
Architecture, Power, National Identity Lawrence Vale
Power
Apparatus
Governance
Politics
Borders Equality Legislation Voice Bio-Politics
Handbook of Tyrrany Theo Deutinger Capital in the 21st Century Thomas Picketty Surveilance Accessibility Size Continuity Dutch Interior Paul Pfeiffer
Five Ways to Make Architecture Political Albena Yaneva
Territory Anssi Passi
Territorial Symbolic Institutional Identity
Architecture and Utopia Manfredo Tafuri Building the Body Politic Margaret Farrar Lawrence Boyer | 198
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l Jung
Person Thing Idea Place
Imaginary
c realms
Real Symbolic
The Fountainhead Ayn Rand
The Architect Documentation Representation
ctice
Canon
ory
Form
Pedagogy
Occupancy
Vitruvius Palladio Durand Laugier Le Corbusier Colin Rowe Rem Koolhaas
Case Study Function
Aesthetics Typology
Material
Polychromy
Color
White
Ornament
Adolf Loos
Ethic
Genealogy
Genome
cle Monument Wars Kirk Savage
Skopje
Narrative Identity Utopianism Nationalism The City
Washington City Image Capital Residence Commerce Governance Regionalism Universalism
Recognition Symbol
199 | Topic Map
ban Planning
Space Place
Nation State
Facism
The Dancing Column Joseph Rykwert Simulation and Simulacra Jean Baudrillard Pattern Mutations Style Type Deviation Order Element
Foucault
Macedonia’s Colorful Revolution Paul Reef
City as Project Pier Vittorio Aureli
Nietzsche
tory
Sleek Purity Clean
The Ideal State Karl Schinkel
Traditional Classicism
Stripped
Brutalism
Communism
Cold War World War II
Collective Memory
Grammar Kenzo Tange Nikola Gruevski Pierre L’enfant SOM Donald Trump
Micro-History Macro-History
Referentialism
Organized Amnesia
Washington Rome London
The Architectural Uncanny Anthony Vidler Skopje Walkie Talkie Damjan Kokalevski
Constructing the Capital City Suzanne Harris-Brandts
Colonialism Invented Tradition The Pizza Effect
Authenticity Legitimacy Cliche Idiom
Mythology
Fable
Imagined Communities Benedict Anderson Max Weber Soren Kierkegaard
Althusser, Louis. Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays. Trans. Ben Brewster. New York: Monthly Review P, 2001. Anderson, Benedict. 2016. Imagined Communities. London, England: Verso Books.
Delaminating the Real
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; 1994.
Billig, Michael. Banal Nationalism. London: Sage. 2010.
Cosgrove, Denis, and Irving Rouse. “8. Spectacle and Society: Landscape as Theater in Premodern and Postmodern Cities.” Understanding ordinary landscapes. Yale University Press, 2009. 99-110. Cosgrove, Denis. “Modernity, community and the landscape idea.” Journal of material culture. 11.1-2 (2006): 49-66.
Cosgrove, Denis, and Stephen Daniels, eds. The iconography of landscape: essays on the symbolic representation, design and use of past environments. Vol. 9. Cambridge University Press, 1988. Deutinger, Theo. Handbook of Tyranny. Zurich: Lars Muller; 2018.
Easterling, Keller. Extrastatecraft. London: Verso Books; 2016.
Farrar, Margaret. Building the Body Politic. Champaign: University of Illinois Press; 2008.
Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison. New York: Pantheon Books. Gutheim, Frederick, and Antoinette Lee, 1977. Garland, David. “What is a ‘History of the Present’? On Foucault’s genealogies and their critical preconditions,” Punishment and Society: 16.4. 2014.
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Hammond, Timur. “The politics of perspective: subjects, exhibits, and spectacle in Taksim Square, Istanbul”, Urban Geography; 40.7. 2019. Hefti, Susanne, and Kokalevski, Damjan. Skopje Walkie Talkie. Leipzig: Spector Books. 2019.
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Harris-Brandts, Suzanne. Constructing the Capital City. Doctoral Thesis: MIT Urban Studies and Planning, 2020.
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Kezer, Zeynep. “An Imaginable Community: The Material Culture of Nation-Building in Early Republican Turkey.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space. 27, no. 3: 508–30. 2009. Koch, Natalie. The Geopolitics of Spectacle. Ithica: Cornell University Press; 2018.
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Lefebvre, Henri. C ritique of Everyday Life. London: Verso. 1991.
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McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. New York: McXGraw Hill. 1964
Paasi, Anssi. “Territory” in Companion to Political Geography ed. Agnew, John. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons. 2015.
Paul Reef. “Macedonia’s Colorful Revolution,” Sudosteuropa. Journal of Politics and Society: 65.1. 2016 Popovski, Jovan. Skopje. Belgrade: Izdavac. 1967.
Rykwert, Joseph. The Dancing Column. Cambridge: MIT Press; 1998.
Sapirstein, Philip. “The Columns of the Heraion at Olympia: Dörpfeld and Early Doric Architecture”, American Journal of Archaeology. Vol 120, No 4. 2016. Savage, Kirk. Monument Wars. Oakland: University of California Press; 2013. Scott, James C. Seeing like a State. New Haven: Yale University Press; 1999.
Snowden, Edward. “ Surveilance is About Power.” A Conversation with Edward Snowden, William and Mary Media Counsel. Lecture. 2017. Tafuri, Manfredo. Architecture and Utopia. Cambridge: MIT Press; 1976 Therborn, Goran. Cities of Power. London: Verso Books; 2017.
Vale, Lawrence. Architecture, Power and National Identity. London: Routledge; 2014.
Venturi, Robert. Complexity and Contradition in Architecture. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1966. 201 | Bibliography
Vidler, Anthony. The Architectural Uncanny. Cambridge: MIT Press; 1992.
Yaneva, Albena. Five Ways to Make Architecture Political: An Introduction to the Politics of Design Practice. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017. Zizek, Slavoj. Mapping Ideology. London: Verso Books; 1994.