Heterotopia par exellence

Research paper:

Heterotopia par exellence 1

1 - Foulcaut, M. “Of Other Spaces, Hetertopias”. Architecture, Mouvement, Continuité 5 (1984): 46-49.

Elena Fadeeva | MArch 2013-1024

I. Introduction In any case I believe that the anxiety of our era has to do fundamentally with space, no doubt a great deal more than with time.2

In the title of my work I used a quote from a Michel Foucault’s essay, "Of Other Spaces, Heterotopias" because for me it is the best illustration for the question I want to think about: can we consider the post-war mass housing projects as heterotopias?

Lecture delivered by the French philosopher to a group of architects in 1957 and the subsequent publication of her essay in 1959 had a tremendous impact on intellectuals all around the world. The idea presented in that lecture, suggested that some specific places exist that "make visible breaks in the integrity, continuity, and the normality of everyday life"3 called heterotopias. This idea was incredibly interesting for architects, urban planners and social anthropologists. The discussions about heterotopias, how can we define and classify them, remain relevant until today. Michel Foucault did not gave any strict definition of what is a heterotopia, and he didn’t offered any system of the usage of the term, leaving to the researchers a vast field for reflection.

In the essay author underlines six principles, which can help to determine the heterotopias, and he also highlights the various features specific to them, such as blurring of the oppositions between public-private, cultural space-useful space, etc.

The author gives us examples of prisons and cemeteries, gardens and brothels, colonies and Finnish baths, but in the end he suggests that the ship is a heterotopia par excellence, because it is 'a place without a place, that exists by itself, that is closed in on itself and at the same time is given over to the infinity of the sea'.4 I found this thought very important, as the image of the ship is one of the key metaphors in architecture. For example in the oldest book in the history of the world, in the Bible the appearance and internal structure only of two buildings is mentioned: the first is the Temple and another is the Noah's Ark - the first ship-house and the best illustration for the metaphor I am writing about.

Quotes of the ship as an ideal refuge, as a wandering eye or as a residential unit in literature and art are innumerable. Gaston Bachelard’s book “the Poetics of Space”

2 Foucault,

Michel. "Of Other Spaces, Heterotopias." Architecture, Mouvement, Continuité 5 (1984): 46.

3 Dehaene ,Michel; de Cauter, Lieven. Heterotopia and the City: Public space in a Postcivil Society (London: Routledge, 2008) p.345 4 Foucault, Michel. "Of Other Spaces, Heterotopias." Architecture, Mouvement, Continuité 5 (1984): 49.

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was quoted numerous times by Foucault, compares human habitat to a seashell: “I dream an abstract-concrete daydream. My bed is a small boat lost at sea; the sudden whistling is the wind in the sails. <…> And I fall asleep lulled by the noise of Paris.”5

Bosch. Shell Navigating on the water, 1562

This metaphor runs through the entire history of architecture, and generally through the whole history of mankind. However it was exceptionally popular among the architects of the mid and late XXth century. For example, such iconic buildings as Moisey Ginsburg’s Narkomfin house in Moscow and the first Le Corbusier’s Unite in Marseille were repeatedly compared to ship both by architects and urban residents, therefore this metaphor became some sort of toponym.

Built in 1959 - 1962 (two years after the publication of the Foucault’s essay) Queen Elisabeth tower blocks in the Hutchesontown C area, Gorballs district of the city of Glasgow were also compared to the ship by the architect himself. Glasgow's Depute Housing Architect, James Kernohan, recalled that 'Spence told them', "on Tuesdays, when all the washing's out, it'll be like a great ship in full sail!”6. This comparison stuck to the building forever.

Incredibly successful and popular immediately after the construction, thirty years after the project degraded and became synonymous with difficult living conditions, poverty and crime.

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Bachelard, Gaston. The poetics of space. (Boston: Beacon press, 1994) p. 28 6 Basil Spence. Buildings and projects. ed. by Campbell, L.; Glendinning, M.; Thomas, J. RIBA publishing, 2012, p. 219

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Despite the great freedom that the original Michel Foucault essay gives to the reader, only few architects have attempted to apply the idea of heterotopias on the really existing spaces. There are two books on this topic, which are very widely known: the one by Soja Edward "Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real-and-Imagined-spaces” Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 1996; and by Kevin Hetherington. “The Badlands of Modernity: Heterotopia and Social Ordering.”

London: Routledge, 1997.

The idea of the heterotopias as some special city spaces, as well its main principles expressed by the author in his essay, seemed to me very relevant to the image of the mass social housing in post-war UK. Hutchesontown C block in all periods of its existence held a special place in the city, so in this essay I would like to consider it as a worked example of heterotopia in the urban tissue.

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II. Great Ship in full Sail In the postwar years Glasgow as many other cities in the UK and all around the world experienced the severe need in housing. In 1957 it was decided to launch a strategy for City Redevelopment, and just after that 29 Comprehensive Development Areas have been established. Among them there was an Eastern part of the Gorballs district, named Hutchesontown. It was sadly known as one of the problem spots in the city - it was called before ‘one of the worst slums in the city’. That was the main reason why the Huchesontown area became one of the key points of the CDA program.

Glasgow’s CDA map

As a response to the contemporary needs architects adopted the strategy of mass construction of high-rise social housing, because they believed that it could help to finish with the problem of the lack of housing at that time. In the architect’s professional community of those years the optimistic belief in the utopian picture of the perfect mass high-rise residential building existed. Due to its quickness and easiness in construction and its low cost it was believed that such a typology can solve all the housing problems that have accumulated from the time of the Industrial revolution. Obviously, that belief was very relative to the maximalist discourse of the architecture of the Modernist era. The Unite in Marseilles, designed by Le Corbusier in 1947-1952 became a worked example, an icon for the mass-housing high-rise slab block typology.

It was inspired by an image of the cruise liner and it have been quoted multiple times by architects in different countries world (for example: Harumi Slab tower block by

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Kunio Maekawa built in Tokyo in 1958). Marseilles Unite has managed to create the perfect apartment block that combined the efficiency and sustainability of the social housing with the comfort and joyfulness of a cruise liner ‘not only because it offered the model of an effective design of an apartment house, but also because it showed how interestingly organized can the social life be in a human habitat, within the scale of a single project.’ 7

Hutchesontown aerial view in 1956 and 1965

Principles and ideas, which worked in Marseille perfectly, also fitted the demands of Glasgow - in fact, both of these cities could boast a large and rich history associated with navigation and shipbuilding. Basil Spence, who along with a team of other young architects was called by the Municipality for the project Queen Elisabeth tower blocks, was very inspired by the Unit of Le Corbusier.

Michel Foucault, in his essay "Of other spaces, Heterotopias" gives the following definition of heterotopia: he defines them as places that exist as a kind of crossroads, and the epitome of a utopia in the particular location. He also compares them with a mirror that is both utopia and heterotopia. The reflection itself embodies utopia, a place without a place. In the mirror we see ourselves reflected in the place in which we do not exist. However, it can also be a heterotopia - it makes that place that a person takes when he or she looks in the mirror counter-referenced with the space in the reflection.

If we continue to follow this logic, this would be the first characteristic with which we can define Huchesontown C block as a heterotopia. Developed in response to a mass request of the time it made an attempt to bring utopia of the architecture of post-war modernism in the real life.

The main project was completed in collaboration with Mischael Blee and represented two giant (for Glasgow in those days) residential towers with twenty floors. Appearance of the Queens Tower blocks was not typical for the city at that time, where the pattern of the repetitive tower blocks could be often found.

Undoubtedly Hutchesontown C project can be considered as an important stage in the life of the city and in the work of the architect, as journalists wrote about him: "Known famously for Coventry Cathedral, and infamously for Glasgow's ill-fated Hutchesontown C housing block".8

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Le Corbusier. “To Live (To Inhabit)” Radiant City (Paris: Editions Magnereuse, 1930) p. 114 Gillespie N., “Sketches of Spence”, Architects Journal, November 1, 2007, p, 49

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It should be taken in account, that the construction conditions at the site were very complicated; the ground was waterlogged, which required extensive piling for every building higher than four storeys. Initially the building was supposed to be supported by the single column, but after all the calculations conveyed by the engineers it became obvious that the proportions of the columns in this case would be too cumbersome. Therefore it was decided to use lighter elements - twin pillars 'buttresses' that referred to the appearance of the Unite in Marseille and also revealed in mind the image of the ship standing in dock.

Twin pillars in the Huchesontown C

"Basil's original idea was to support each of these ten 'towers', which are about 40 feet square, on one leg in the center, and cantilever the tower out from that one leg.

This however pointed out by the engineers at Arup - would need a floor slab about six feet thick, so that was dropped in favor of [twin legs in] a shaped form" 9 Queen Elisabeth tower blocks represented two long slab blocks, which included the system of the public balconies that were supposed to serve as public spaces where residents could have a rest, enjoy the fresh air and sunlight. These balconies can be considered as a reference to the notorious public roof in the Unite in Marseille, which according to the author, served as the public space collecting all the tenants together.

At the same time their appearance was clearly referring to the ship decks.

Of course in addition to the appearance of the building ‘decks’ there was a great number of elements that were revealing the naval thematic. For example the roof fence, that really looked like the ship's rail, and long corridors from the cruise liner that can be also found on the sections presented by Le Corbusier in his book La Ville Radieuse.

It is interesting that Michel Foucault defines the third principle of heterotopia as its ability to combine the unconnected places, spaces and images: "Thus it is that the

9

Glendinning, Rebuilding Scotland, p. 100

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theatre brings onto the rectangle of the stage, one after the other, a whole series of places that are foreign to one another".10 Hutchesontown C block in Glasgow also connects various spaces: the residential space of a ‘civilized tenement’ and the romantic space of the ship.

Roof details and the corridor – ‘inner street’

Despite all the citations of the successful Unite project, unfortunately the fate of the Queen Elisabeth tower blocks developed in a more dramatic way. Over time, the building that was built in a very short period of time began to decline. The City Municipality was unable to maintain it in a proper condition and to constantly perform the repair works. It was the beginning of the end. The lifts and window frames went out of service first of all. Through poorly embedded seams water seeped into the building and that also certainly entailed many other problems.

If we will refer again to the Michael Foucault's text and will draw our attention to the other principles that define heterotopia – we will see that all of them can be actually found in the Hutchesontown C. The fourth principle declares the special relationship of a heterotopia with the time.

The author proposes us an example of museums and libraries that 'accumulate time'. Hutchesontown C blocks also accumulated time - they were not receiving proper repair, therefore different building elements became morally obsolete.

The fifth and sixth principles can also be traced back to Queen Elisabeth tower blocks. "Heterotopias always presuppose a system of opening and closing that both isolates them and makes them penetrable."11 The public space around and inside the slab blocks was also penetrable and it can be described with the direct quote from the Foucault’s article "[spaces] that seem to be pure and simple openings, but that generally hide curious exclusions. Everyone can enter into these heterotopic sites, but in fact that is only an illusion-we think we enter where we are, by the very fact that we enter, excluded." If the stranger entered the Hutchesontown C block area in the 80s, he had a very bold feeling of being excluded from the healthy urban tassel. He found himself in an indeterminate space living by its own laws.

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Foucault, Michel. "Of Other Spaces, Heterotopias." Architecture, Mouvement, Continuité 5 (1984): p. 49.

11 Foucault, Michel. "Of Other Spaces, Heterotopias." Architecture, Mouvement, Continuité 5 (1984): p. 47.

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“They were grim places to live, particularly for those with kids, and before the belated appointment of council concierges they could feel uncomfortable - if not downright unsafe - to enter or leave. The lifts were erratic, the back stairs periodically strewn with needles or comatose junkies or both. Sir Basil probably regarded his design as architecturally risqué, but for those living there the buildings were simply risky.”12 Heterotopia has always a special relationship with the city - it is the sixth principle from the Foucault's article, and it can be easily said about Hutchesontown C blocks.

Any unfortunate changes and all the decline processes in the building leaded to changes in the contents of social groups, which inhabited it. The middle class tenants leaved the slab-blocks and moved to the more prestigious areas of the city, their places were then occupied by less prosperous groups of citizens. This observation intersects the second principle characterizing heterotopia: "The second principle of this description of heterotopias is that a society, as its history unfolds, can make an existing heterotopia function in a very different fashion; for each heterotopia has a precise and determined function within a society and the same heterotopia can, according to the synchrony of the culture in which it occurs, have one function or another.”13 In Queen Elisabeth tower blocks community and the social status of the buildings changed with time. It can be assumed that these changes reflect the whole massive change in the architectural ideology – the great switch from the optimism of the 60-s to the disappointment of the 80-s, from the architecture of modernism to architecture of post-modernism.

“Hardly a garden” – photo from Elaine Sommerville’s work “60’s housing utopia – 90’s urban reality”, 1993

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Hewitt, Dave. “Peripheral vision: dwelling in and on the Gorbals flats” Corridor (Glasgow: CCA publications, 2001) 13 Foucault, Michel. "Of Other Spaces, Heterotopias." Architecture, Mouvement, Continuité 5 (1984): p. 49.

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III. Conclusion Being set on the idea Of getting to Atlantis, You have discovered of course Only the Ship of Fools is Making the voyage this year, As gales of abnormal force Are predicted, and that you Must therefore be ready to Behave absurdly enough To pass for one of The Boys, At least appearing to love Hard liquor, horseplay and noise.14

There were several reasons for the decline of the Hutchesontown C blocks: inefficient design, lack of maintenance funds or just the ineffectiveness of such a typology.

In the essay “Of Other Spaces, Heterotopias”, Michel Foucault defines two types of heterotopias: heterotopias of crisis, which are more characteristic of archaic societies and those of deviation, which can be found in the modern society.

Starting as a postwar architectural utopia thirty years after Queen Elisabeth tower blocks have turned into heterotopia of deviation - anxious place on the map of the city, whose inhabitants subconsciously determined to a certain social class.

"Probably they should never have been built in the first place ... The blocks at Queen Elizabeth Square are a monumental monstrosity. They are an eyesore. They are in a bad state of repair, they are unpopular and unsatisfactory."15 On Sunday 12 September 1993 Hutchesontown C blocks have been exploded, and this put an end to the vivid dreams about a fantastic concrete ships cutting through the swell of an urban sea.16

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Wystan Hugh Auden, Atlantis, 1941 15 Basil Spence. Buildings and projects. ed. by Campbell, L.; Glendinning, M.; Thomas, J. RIBA publishing, 2012, p. 219 16 Hewitt, Dave. “Peripheral vision: dwelling in and on the Gorbals flats” Corridor (Glasgow: CCA publications, 2001)

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IV. Bibliography

Allaun, F. No place like Home – Britain’s housing tragedy. London: Andre Deutsch Ltd, 1972 Baillieu A., "An asset for Glasgow", The Independent, 28 April 1993.

Banham, R. The New Brutalism – Ethic or Aesthetic?. London: The Architectural Press, 1966.

Bullock, N. Building in the Post-War World. London: Spon, 2001 Callanan, L. Shaping Self and World: Technology and the Structure of Space.

Newfoundland: St. John’s, 2007 Deleuze, G. Desert Islands and Other Texts. Paris: Les editions de Minuit, 2002 Foucault, Michel. "Of Other Spaces, Heterotopias." Architecture, Mouvement, Continuité 5. New York: Pantheon Books, 1984 Gillespie, N. “Sketches of Spence”, Architects Journal, November 1, 2007, p.49 Glendinning, M. Rebuilding Scotland: The Postwar Vision, 1945-1975. East Linton: Tuckwell, 1997 Glendinning, M., Muthesius, S. Tower Block. Yale: Yale University Press, 1994 Gold, J.R. The Experience of Modernism. Modern architects and the Future City. Cambridge: The University Press, 1997 Grindrod, J. Concretopia: A Jorney Around the Rebuilding of Postwar Britain.

Brecon: Old Street Publishsing Ltd, 2013 Hall, P. Cities of Tomorrow: An intellectual history of urban planning. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2002 Hewitt, Dave. “Peripheral vision: dwelling in and on the Gorbals flats”. Corridor.

Glasgow: CCA publications, 2001 Jedphcott, P. Homes in High Flats. Department of Social and Economic Research. University of Glasgow. Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1976 Kerr, J. "Rot sets in to bright new Gorbals", The Guardian, 27 November 1976 Long, P., Thomas, J., eds. Basil Spence: Architect. Edinburgh: National Galleries of Scotland, 2007

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Low, R. "The vanishing voters of Queen's Park, Glasgow", The Observer, 28 November 1982, p. 4 Murray, G. "Fury over Gorbals tribute to man who designed 'Alcatraz', Evening Times, 16 January 2008.

Murray, I., Oley, J., eds. Le Corbusier and Britain: An Anthology. New Heaven: Yale UP, 1994

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