9 renovating rossi

Renovating RossiStories of anticipation in close encounters of the (un) desirable kind

brady burroughs KTH, Critical Studies

2nd International Conference on Architecture and Fiction: WRITINGPLACE -literary methods in architectural research and design, TU Delft, Faculty of Architecture, 25-27 November 2013.

Renovating Rossi Stories of anticipation in close encounters of the (un)desirable kind

Abstract On January 1, 2012, a PhD candidate in architecture, within Critical Studies at KTH in Stockholm, Sweden, walked into one of Aldo Rossi’s 1977 Bergamo row house units, locked herself in, and began renovating.1 The building, consisting of five two-story units, has a traditional vernacular stucco exterior in pale ochre, blended with hues of sexism, racism, and a pigment of homophobia. The stairs of the entrance portico leading up to the main door are built with colonial concrete and covered with capitalist green aluminum roofing, trimmed in neoliberalism. She has even attached a mailbox, the slender metal wall-mounted kind with a flap top (in green to match the roof), just outside the entry door for those who wish to exchange correspondence the “old fashioned” way.2 She lives there now, although the project is unfinished and ongoing. It’s a construction site, but on this particular day, visitors are welcome to an Open House and guided tour.

Part of a PhD project that practices ‘whoness’ and ‘hereness’ through storytelling, holds a special interest in critical architectural pedagogies and asks “If we begin by looking at our most vulnerable, passionate or empowering moments in life, what kind of architecture will we make then?,” this critical fiction begins to ‘build’ a feminist house from the inside out, through an act of occupation and renovation.3 However, while one visitor is assumed to be following the guided tour, wandering through the renovated rooms, the other visitor never actually sets foot inside.4 This leaves the reader to reconstruct this reconstruction through their own imagination, with the help of a series of close encounters situated around events, rumors and the effects of the interior changes spilling out into the immediate surroundings, in the guise of enchanting sounds, scents and fablesque garden features.

In a series of conversations and (mis)communications during one March afternoon, a factual fiction of desires is textually materialized in relation to the built work of a past reference of iconic (male) architecture.5 Aldo Rossi, an architect who vehemently refused to be categorized

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and who wrote “A Scientific Autobiography”- a personal factual fiction of his own, figures in the story as a ghostly presence and owner of the excitable bull terrier, but more importantly as the author of the built framework and threshold of suspense for the narrative as a whole.6 The Bergamo row house plays the role of what Rossi might call “the fixed scene of human events” where small acts of vulnerability are performed in a constant state of anticipation, while posing critical questions about power and privilege in the quotidian places of one fictional residential block.7 In a search for my foremothers and in the re-building of one of my forefathers, I engage the help of queer and feminist theory, while the uncertainty of desire, as well as the dilemma of getting inside, remains unresolved.8

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Intro Caprice, the neighborhood ‘gossip’ in a residential area of Mozzo, outside of Bergamo, Italy, stood watching just around the corner as chaos broke out, when three Cornish Rex cats, owned by the American-Swedish PhD student, Bee, who had occupied one of Aldo Rossi's 1977 row house units and was illegally renovating in the name of feminist architectural design research, escaped and ran rampant through the gardens, upsetting the ghost of the newly awoken bull terrier.9 She could see the visitors, most dressed in black (Had someone died?), running about trying to catch the skinny gremlin-like creatures with big ears. Later that day, Caprice would recount this scene (with the usual exaggerations for dramatic effect) to her good friend Anna over their daily espresso and favorite pastries- sfogliatine and baba, as they shook their heads in mutual disapproval, although both secretly looked forward to the young ‘soon to be spinster’s’ next mishap with anticipation, providing valuable new matter for their scrutiny.10 The terrier, formerly owned by the late architect Aldo Rossi, is a familiar and accepted presence to the residents of the Case Unifamiliare, and is commonly seen sleeping in the bushes along the rear façade of the building. He was awoken by one of the researcher’s Belgian colleagues, Jo, who came to attend an ‘Open House’ for the renovation project and stumbled over the dog, as he passed through the narrow space between the end of the building and the fence bordering the street, looking for a way in through the gallery along the back.11 Jo knew that his friend Bee’s intentions were acts of reparation, healing and connection, ultimately grounded in a pedagogical desire to change the way architects think about space and the way architects think about themselves, but was an ‘occupation’ really necessary? The importance of new experiences for Jo’s own writing experiments in how we position ourselves as architects, teachers, researchers, even humans, in relation to our power and privileges through critical fictions, and his intention to make ”a work of the imagination that’s simultaneously rigorously true” (not to mention his love for the Italian language), clinched his positive rsvp to the invitation, although Bergamo was far away.12 The colleague he was supposed to meet, Seh from Umeå, Sweden, booked her flight at the mere mention of an architectural ‘occupation’.

This aligned with her own ideas to propose a series of ‘disruptions’ in order to reveal habits, shift perceptions and raise ethical concerns about the assumptions encountered in the places of conflict, dreams and drama of everyday life.13 She arrived much earlier and had already disappeared inside, leaving her colleague Jo perplexed upon seeing the “Women Only” sign posted in the front entrance. 14

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Mixed signals Jo began to write a text message to his friend Seh, asking for help.

At the moment I'm wandering around the slightly altered Rossi house, shuffling in front of the entrance marked by the women only sign, wondering what to do. I already tried to walk around the building but got stuck in the vegetation flanking the house and there was also this dog I stumbled over. I can hear the echoes of splashes…15 Before he could finish and press send, he received a text message from Seh. Hi Jo! Where R U? I’m inside the Studio Salon where I’ve been sitting, reading in the sunlight all morning from the private poetry collection, a special edition of Gaston Bachelard’s ‘Water and Dreams’, bound between Judith Butler’s ‘Gender Trouble’ and Sara Ahmed’s ‘Queer Phenomenology’.16 A real pg turner! ☺ Was it you that I could C thru the window, wandering around in the garden? Be careful! I saw a dog running loose out there earlier. Just wanted to say that I’m turning off my mobile now. Will be in the Bathing Salon. Hope to C U soon! Seh x Jo immediately tried calling Seh and then Bee, who was hosting the event, but no answer from either of them.17 (His friend Bee was one of those introverted types who always had the signal on her phone turned off.) The Open House didn’t start for another half an hour or so, and although a bit cool for a spring equinox, it was a pretty decent March afternoon, so he decided to take a stroll around the property. As Jo rounded the corner of the end of the building a second time, he noticed that these now thirty year-old row houses were showing some signs of wear and tear.

There were cracks in the stucco, even a few spots where large pieces had fallen off, and on the faded color someone had graffitied a vulgar message to Berlusconi himself.

As Jo walked along the edge of the outer perimeter of the flat, open grassy yard extending along the entire rear facade, he heard a child’s voice, but couldn’t see where it was coming from. All he heard was, “The fact IS, the rear façade and garden are quite uniform, but there are three new ‘follies’ located sporadically on the grounds that play an important part in the 4

daily lives of the residents.18 The fact IS, all of the follies in the garden are camouflaged for onlookers from outside a certain radius of the garden, as they are painted on one side to exactly blend in with the background of the façade in the correct perspective, with only shadows giving it away in the strong sunlight.”19 Jo squinted and looked everywhere, but he couldn’t see the source of this voice that he was hearing. It sounded as if it was right next to him! He began to worry that all of those long research hours and his slight sleep deprivation were finally beginning to catch up with him. Again the voice! “The fact IS, the outside ‘masks’ are re-painted twice a year, for the spring equinox and winter solstice, along with a ritual open to all to mark the changing of the seasons.” At this point, Jo, already weary after the dog encounter and left with no hints from the partly cloudy skies, began to move swiftly in the direction of the voice and literally walked right into an ‘invisible’ cyprus tree and fell to the ground.20 A little Italian woman wearing a habit, perhaps in her early 80’s, came running out of nowhere to offer him some help, while startling him half to death with her sudden appearance and loud exclamations.

- Si è fatto male?!! Tutto Okaay?!!! Okaay?!!!

Quickly on his feet again, Jo shook off the surprise of the camouflaged garden feature and the concerned neighbor. Now, realizing he was fine, Anna- named after Anna Magnani the most celebrated Italian actress of the post-war era, began speaking in a very animated manner, shoulders slightly hunched forward, with “the tips of (each) hand brought sharply together to form an upward-pointing cone… shaken more or less violently up and down.”21 Jo was unaware that she had just been placing a little pouch with heirloom seeds into one of the secret golden drawers inside the folly, when she saw Jo’s walking crash, but he noticed that a distraught look had come over the face of his holy rescuer. 22 - I semi degli pomodori! Dalla famiglia!

Finally, she realized that Jo didn't speak Italian… so she tried instead with:

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- Eh, scusa! Da tomaaytos, aava mia faaamilee. Eh, Aye, aye reeescue dem! Capisci?23 To which Jo simply nodded and smiled.

Jo understood from their choppy, yet engaging, conversation that this woman was also a resident of the row house and knew of his friend who was occupying the second unit from the end. Before her, there had been a family from the south with three small children, but they had outgrown the space at the arrival of the third. Even though the two oldest boys could share the second upstairs bedroom for a while longer, now there was no room for ‘La Nonna’ from Napoli, who visited regularly. They built a new partition wall downstairs, making a small extra room to the right of the entry hall, but as Nonna was getting older, her bad knees made it difficult for her to climb the narrow, steep stairway to the upstairs bathroom each time.

Anna had heard that Bee left part of the wall standing after the recent renovations to separate the studio from the library, but that the wall was perforated with odd openings framed with empty gold frames on one side and an intricate set of thin ramps and platforms on the other, where there was always a lounging cat or two.

There also seemed to be plenty of rumors in circulation, with stories of everything from pagan magic to social upheaval to ‘deviant’ sexual practices. Apparently, from what Jo could gather, ‘neighbors’ speculated (although there seemed to be only one recurring name, Caprice) as to what exactly went on inside of the occupied unit and why it was even necessary with such extensive renovations in a perfectly good row house in the first place? A well-known and highly regarded Italian architect had given these living spaces a certain order. Who was this ‘ragazza Americana’ to come and change it? And by force nonetheless! (Of course, it was a different matter when a nice Italian family needed an extra room for the mother-in-law.)

Although many of the neighbors had been invited in for an espresso on occasion, Anna had yet to see the renovation with her own eyes. She had heard from a friend of Caprice’s that the entire first floor was like an adult playground for artists, poets, half-naked hippies and their pets. It had the sense of a bathhouse - studio - theater, with a little bakery on the side, and she knew for a fact that the entry hall was paved with strange MAGIC tiles! This friend of Caprice’s had passed from the Bathing Salon over the entry hall with wet feet and words had magically appeared in the squares of white marble.24 There were also reports of ghosts haunting the floor above, but no one had actually ever been upstairs. (Anna quickly made the sign of the cross.)

- She izza… little ‘pazza’, no? Craaazy!25 6

Jo tried in French.

- Uh, L’architecte?26 - Boh! Nooo! I dunnow, ma.. sii, mya friende, Caprice, she saya dissa architetta?

She izza DEEEFFERENT! Butta naiiise.

She izza not a maaarried, noo chiiildren and wit olla da caatse? Olla da weeeman!

Maaaybe she don’ta like ‘Barilla pasta,’ capisci?27 You arre friende? YOU maaarried?!!28 - Uhhhhm… Jo felt something similar to a hot flash and began looking for his escape.

- Anda eeeverrry tinga, Greece! Greece! Greece! She izza craaazy for Greece!29 At an opportune silence, Jo politely thanked Anna and headed into the grove from where she had previously emerged. Once on the inside, it was like Jo had entered a completely different world, with vegetation, bling and bright, clear colors exploding like the streets of a small Mediterranean village.30 Now he understood! THIS must be where the voice was coming from earlier! Had the child been hiding inside, knowing all along that Jo couldn’t see her, laughing at his surprise and confusion? She must have gotten scared and run off when she realized that the joke nearly gave Jo a concussion.

Now, in the shade of a ring of cyprus trees and the occasional buzzing of dancing dragonflies, Jo sees a large old apothecary cabinet, re-finished in a glossy coat of gold enamel, standing on a plinth of polished red travertine tiles. Next to the cat bed atop the cabinet, sits a hand painted ‘Rent A Cat’ sign.31 Jo, talking out loud to himself…”Very funny, I’d recognize Bee’s humor anywhere. I wonder if anyone has ever actually tried it?” Walking around to admire the cabinet, Jo finds a more ‘official’ looking sign posted on one of the short sides.

Unfortunately, it was written mostly in Italian, however, at the bottom was a small patch for scanning with a mobile phone and a note in English: “For information in other languages please scan the QR code and select your language of choice.”32 Jo scanned the code and selected English. [Il Gabinetto dei Segreti. (The Cabinet of Secrets) has hundreds of tiny drawers on two opposite sides where residents and guests are welcome to place old family recipes, photographs & letters from unrequited loves and lost friendships, mementos and talismans of unspoken desire or regret, heirloom seeds soon to be banned by the EU, or any small objects of obsession, addiction or secret sentimental value.33 The drawers

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remain anonymous, but by placing the secrets together in a collection, the burden of pride, shame and sadness is shared, as is the knowledge (or realization) that the cabinet is almost always full.]34 Anna had mentioned that there were, of course, the occasional incidents of theft and vandalism, but for the most part, these new places of shared ritual for the community of residents were respected.

Jo noticed that one of the old photographs had slid out of its drawer and was trapped in the crack between two of the travertine tiles. As he picked it up and blew away the dust, Jo saw a sepia-tinted black and white photo printed off-center, with a small stain in the bottom lefthand corner. Two young women with brunette hair in identical polka dot dresses, stood outside in a garden among flowers, hedges and blossoming trees. One had her long hair rolled into two tightly swirled braids, one on each side of her head, and was looking at the flower she held in her right hand and smiling. Or was she blushing?

The other, perhaps the one who had given the flower, had medium length hair, casually pulled back in a hairband and was standing rather squarely, with her handbag in one hand and also looking down at the flower. There was an air of anticipation in the photo, while the one receiving this gesture of kindness, or of love, looked a bit tense or uncomfortable, seemingly unaccustomed to accepting such a display of affection, much less to having it photographed, as both avoided meeting each other’s gaze. On the back was residue of dried glue and a slight tear from being pulled from a photo album, with more recent writing in neatly lettered black ink ‘ATHENS MARKET, 2011’.35 Jo wondered who took this photo and under what circumstances, and what did it mean to the current owner and person who had placed it in the drawer? But then he quickly stuck it back into one of the empty slots and continued along toward what looked like a fountain at the other end of the yard.

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Words of wisdom Part of the spring ritual, the lawn outside of the gallery is sprinkled with paper airplanes containing literary messages, political challenges and poetic flirtations hidden within the folds, eventually finding their receiver with some help from the wind. As Jo passes by the gallery of the occupied unit on his way to the now visible fountain, a paper airplane comes whizzing through the air, aiming straight for his head. Luckily, it just misses his eye, as the tip hits his temple and falls to the ground. He looks up, only to see a cluttered space overflowing with what looks like costumes, mirrors and props, and full of what Jo would describe as confident, ‘intellectual-looking’ women talking, laughing, writing, folding and launching. One of them makes eye contact and winks at Jo.36 She looks familiar, just like the picture that Bee once showed him of her favorite fiction author, Ali Smith. Was SHE invited? Jo blushes and bends down to open the paper airplane lying at his feet and reads his personal message. ...style's authority dismantles authority, reveals it as a load of macho balls.

Style is never not content.

The last thing literary style is is a matter of indifference; that's why it's so powerful a stirrer of love and passion, anger and argument.

You might be able to spray fashion on like a perfume. But style is integral. It's what things really smell like.

The word style comes in its English form from the Latin stilus, primarily the word for a writing implement, possibly fused with Greek stylos, the word for a pillar, one that either architecturally supports or adorns a structure or place.

Style is also an aesthetic means of containing something for us and allowing us both distance from and proximity to it.

Style will also discomfit us, since art's about both, being held and being flung open. …a stylistic critique doesn't just protect, it also reveals, allowing the safe surfacing of all the unsayables, the primal responses.37

Jo looks up a second time and the woman, Ali?, is still staring at him and smiling. Jo smiles back, feeling like someone has really ‘seen’ him, really ‘gotten’ him and besides being slightly smitten with this stranger, he feels an enormous desire to go off immediately to a nearby café and work a bit on his own writing.38 How could she have known that his research, a sort of research-by-design with words, was completely dependent on these types of arguments? In addition to doing or proposing, rather than writing about a certain area or phenomenon, there was, in fact, a political dimension to writing critical fictions, beyond the obvious questioning of traditional forms of knowledge production and making work more accessible! The part about 9

‘stirring passion’ and being ‘flung open’ by art and literary style reminded him of one of his favorite quotes by bell hooks, “Imagination is one of the most powerful modes of resistance that oppressed and exploited folks can and do use. ...Without the ability to imagine, people remain stuck, unable to move into a place of power and possibility.”39 Jo was very caught up in his own thoughts, but the odd tinkling sounds and splashing echoes, along with the distinct smell of freshly baked sweet muffins (Was it cherry?) coming from inside the unit, drew him back to the present moment, rivaled only by the trickle of Fontana di Denunce Vicinato (The Fountain of Neighborly Complaints). Jo looks up a third time, but Ali has disappeared inside. Feeling a bit empty, and a little lovesick, Jo decides to wander over to take a closer look at the fountain. As he approaches, he sees a stunning female nude statue with an acidy green patina standing, slightly leaning to the side, with her hand to one ear, as water lightly trickles down from the mouth of the fish she holds with the other hand above her head.

(More of a pond than a fountain, it seems to be a gathering place for local seagulls and other small birds, not to mention a favorite spectacle for the cats who watch from sunny window sills.)

Upon arrival at the fountain, Jo meets a child throwing breadcrumbs to the small fish in the murky water, a ritual of her own every day after lunch. She took advantage of the Italian tradition of 2-hour lunch breaks at home. The nearby park had a larger pond, but with signs outlawing the feeding of ‘wild life’ (with anything other than purchased food bags on site at local vendors). And besides, a gang of local kids, bullies who claim the pond as their turf, had made it painfully clear that they don't take kindly to children who are ‘different’, children like 10 year-old Brooke Bayoude. The daughter of Terence and Bernice, young academic parents from Yorkshire, teaching and working temporarily on a research fellowship at the University of Bergamo, Brooke spent much time alone, writing facts in her Moleskin notebook marked History.40 That is, when she wasn’t striking up conversations with strangers who also looked like they didn’t belong.

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- The fact IS, HERE is where the residents are supposed to whisper all of their complaints and irritations about each other, as their frustration and anger is released and washed away into the dark pool of water lilies below.

Jo recognized the voice!

- The fact IS, unlike confessions of another sort, this ritual offers no promise of resolution or forgiveness. However, some of the residents have admitted to me that they regularly confide in the stone goddess and find solace in knowing that there is always a willing ear nearby.41 Jo wondered why she began almost every sentence with “The fact is”? He decided that it must be one of those really annoying ‘things’ that kids do.

- The fact IS, the pond in the park is an example of the effects of the neoliberal capitalist society we live in.

- I’m sorry, what did you just say? How old are you anyway?

Jo thought to himself, “Who IS this kid? She must be repeating something she overheard her parents discussing.”

- I’m 10, and I was saying that the pond in the park, with its standardized food bags for sale, is indicative of the political shift towards ‘progressive’ conservatism we are currently experiencing across Europe. What do you do?

- I’m a researcher and teacher at the university, in architecture.

- Ok, so let me explain it like this, the pond is like an educational institution, and the food bags are like the imposed move toward standardization and fees, leading to a system where education just feeds the market and has lost its intentions of ‘higher learning’, critical thinking and knowledge production. You could call it a ‘Cognitive Capitalist Take-Over’.42 Or in pond terms, giving the fish and ducks the same commercially processed artificial diet, day in and day out, Digestive Capitalist Take-Over.

- Uh, yeah well, I guess you're right? As a teacher, I have noticed a goal-oriented tendency in architecture schools recently, to be more concerned with churning out ‘employable’ architects, while merely paying lip service to the importance of experimentation, social and ethical responsibility and questioning the role of the profession.

- Do YOU make anything sell-able?

- Nooo, but…

- So what good are you to society?

- Look, shouldn’t you be in school? And why did you let me walk into that tree earlier, huh?

- Sorry, but I DID provide you with all of the necessary facts.

- But the facts didn’t match my perception! I hardly even heard what you said, because I was more concerned with THE FACT that I was hearing voices!

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Jo feels a flush of anger come over him, but then he hesitates as he remembers that he is speaking with a 10 year-old child. He hears a commotion around the other side of the building, loud voices, dog barking, etc., but his attention is quickly pulled back into the matter at hand with Brooke’s next question.

- But you DO affect your profession in some direct or measurable way, right?

- Well, it's not really that simple…

- Hm, so this ‘research’ you do… will all of the ‘real’ architects read it then?

- REAL!? I’m a… probably not.

- Oh I see, you’re doing something more for students or the average person perhaps, to make ideas about architecture more accessible?

- You wouldn’t understand, but it has to be theoretically and methodologically rigorous, in order to be accepted within the academic research community.

- Oh, so you just want to fit in too?

- No! No! That's not it either. In order to PUBLISH in a recognized, peer-reviewed journal, it HAS to be a certain way, even though my intention is to test these boundaries.43 - Publish?! So you want to be famous?!

- NO! My I N S T I T U T I O N requires it. They’re the ones who employ me!

Brooke was quiet for a moment, her forehead wrinkled in a look of concentration.

- Is this the same I N S T I T U T I O N that we talked about earlier? The one in the Cognitive Capitalist Take-Over?

Jo paused, sighed.

- Yeah.

- Well, will what you’re doing change academia then?

- Ugh, I hope so, but I’m not certain that it will do that either.

- Then why ARE you doing it?

Jo began to feel frustrated, overwhelmed and defeated, not to mention a great disdain over the fact that a 10 year-old girl’s questions brought him to this state. How the hell was he going to survive the questions from the opponent at his upcoming seminar? He knew that he should have gone to the café and worked! Brooke realized that she had made Jo feel bad. It happened sometimes when she was ‘too clever for her own good’, so she began in a consoling tone:44 12

- Don’t worry, that American-Swedish woman in unit number 2 is one of those ‘architect researchers’ like you. She got the same look on her face when I asked her about HER job. She says that she believes in education and I think she said something about Mel Brooks?45 But I’m still not sure what comic parody has to do with educational institutions? I asked my mom and she said that it pretty much sums it all up. Anyways, the fact IS, she wants to change the way young architects think, but I don’t know how she’s planning on doing that when she’s gone and locked herself in that row house?!

- Yeah, she’s my friend. Have you been inside?

- Sure, lots of times! One time, she even let me help her hang the portraits in the entrance hall!

You know, the scary ones? The fact IS, a hologram is a three-dimensional image produced by a laser. That’s how the portraits change from one face to another. The fact IS, many iconic male architects have received all of the recognition for work done in collaboration with their female counterparts.46 - I didn’t go in, because I saw the “Women Only” sign posted in the entrance.

Brooke looked suddenly surprised. She looked Jo up and down, and landed with a determined stare at Jo’s baby-smooth high cheek bones, but then just shrugged and continued47…

- Oh that?! The fact IS, gender is just a social, cultural construction anyway. One time, I even got to wear a mustache. I was a dragon king!48 There’s all kinds of costumes in the gallery.

Besides, the sign is just for the Bathing Salon, not the entire house. And the fact IS, she just puts it out there sometimes for research experiments, to mess with people and see how they react, so she has something to write about. 49 She makes fun of serious things, says that sometimes humor is the best weapon. I guess it’s kind of like when she sneaks out from her own ‘occupation’ to eat pizza with my parents?

During this intense conversation with the precocious child, Jo has completely lost track of time and missed the beginning of the Open House. He runs around to the front entrance again, but no signs of anyone entering or leaving. They must already be inside. All of the commotion with the dog barking that Jo overheard earlier, came as visitors were filing in and one of the guests accidentally left the door ajar, giving Bee’s three mischievous cats a chance to escape.

In the excitement of ‘cat catching’, Bee had accidentally dropped the two letters she had in her hand. One was a nasty letter to Monsanto, to follow up after a worrying discussion at the last solstice gathering, about how her neighbor Anna’s tomato seeds, passed down in her

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family for generations, were now at risk.50 The other was addressed to the late architect of the row house and former owner of the bull terrier ghost from the grounds, explaining the renovation project and motivations behind the changes. The address was a bit tricky, since it was written to a soul that had already passed, but Bee figured that at the rate of the Italian Postal Service, they must be used to delivering mail to the deceased.51 They would surely figure it out! Jo finds these letters lying in the shadow on the pavement beside the stairs of the entrance portico. He tries the door, locked. Jo peeks into the empty mailbox and drops them into the metal container for his friend to find later, as he heads back around to the gallery side of the building in disappointment.

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Tall Tales As Jo rounds the corner of the rear façade, he finds a group of men milling about a quite elaborate campsite. He hadn’t even noticed it before, as if it had appeared right out of thin air, but then he remembered the camouflage ‘masks’ and felt the soreness from the bump on his forehead. Jo seemed to grab the attention of a couple of them, as they came up to greet him. A gentleman named Max, with a German accent, and an eccentric fellow named Dante shook hands and patted Jo on the back with a “Welcome my boy!,” as they invited him in to join them for a late afternoon ‘aperitivo’.52 Max explained that they had pitched camp in the place for the winter ritual, which was a folly of a more temporary nature and wasn’t being used at the moment. Right now, they were using the stools that were usually kept stacked in an orderly manner directly outside of the gallery, as both seats and tables to hold their espresso cups and grappa glasses. But during the ritual, these were placed in a semi-circle formation, with the arc tangent to the façade and the opening toward the moon. Likewise, they were using the over-sized mobile fire pit for cooking food and for warmth, but during the ritual, the fire was lit at nine o’clock sharp and placed within the semi-circle, causing shadows of the sitting group to be cast on the walls of the façade.

They both agreed that Il Fuoco Dalla Luna (The Fire

By The Moon) suited them, since it was a place for storytelling, debate and political action and was known to conjure up quite lively gatherings, with a little help from local grappa supplies. Dante, the more poetic of the two, explained that the fire encourages heated discussions, while the moon silently

guides

arguments,

toward

steering

them

creative, away

respectful from

false

consensus or blame. However, Max and Dante found Bee’s instructions for the event too limiting, as she was adamant that the evening always began with a round, allowing everyone to state one pressing matter they wish to challenge, resist, or improve during the coming year.53 They weren’t used to waiting for a turn to speak and didn’t see any harm in just letting those who had something important to say, speak up. And then there was the ritual itself! Each person writes down their one pressing matter on a piece of paper, dips it into a jar of honey and then throws it into the fire. This reminded them more of witchcraft 15

than ritual. It was a bit ‘feminine’ for their taste. Jo understood that his friend Bee had argued with Max on this issue, using a quote from a female physicist, Max’s own area of expertise, as Dante teased “‘putting out of equilibrium’ Max!”.54 Max ignored him and explained that after all of the ‘hocus pocus’, the evening followed a more casual form as the semi-circle dispersed into varying constellations scattered over the garden, with one or several discussions carried out by fireside.

Seated around a makeshift table, where Jo could see one of the paper airplanes out of the corner of his eye, were Herman, William and Anton. They unfolded the paper and took turns scribbling what looked like ‘edits’ in red, as they chuckled and toasted each other with small shots of grappa.55 Jo thought for a moment about how moved he was by his own message just a couple of hours ago, but surely it was ‘all in good fun’.56 The Italians, Luchino, Michelangelo and Federico sat off to the side, smoking, fiddling with a camera and scratching the belly of the bull terrier.57 Jo notices one of them look up and signal to someone in the occupied unit and follows his gaze only to see the curtains of the second floor window quickly shut and a shadowy figure move away from the panes of glass illuminated from inside, as the early evening light begins to disappear. Jo knows that the Open House is for the entrance level only and he wonders who the Italians might know inside?

The loud, jovial group explains that they previously resided in unit number two, before they were (temporarily) evicted by his friend. As part of the renovations, Bee had to make room for all of those ‘intellectual-looking’ women and various characters Jo had seen on the gallery space earlier, her inspirations and references, like Ali. Consequently, all of Aldo Rossi’s inspirational sources (these gentlemen) were kindly asked to vacate the premises. Despite their recent displacement, Jo found them surprisingly at ease, hardly bothered, since all of the times before they had ALWAYS managed to reinstall themselves in their ‘rightful place’ again.58 Jo wondered whether there wasn’t a way to expand the gallery to accommodate everyone, but the group quickly dismantled this idea, claiming that it was an awful lot of ‘unnecessary effort’, when it was just a matter of time before ‘order was restored’. Why not just enjoy ourselves during the wait? Besides, they were more comfortable with the way things were, the way they were ‘originally intended’.59 They mentioned their friend Aldo, the architect, who had designed the row house (with their help and inspiration, of course). Herman took credit for the overall vernacular ‘look’ of the house, with its pitched roof, repetitive forms and local Bergamo color scheme, as it was his 16

work that taught Aldo about the relation between observation and memory.60 This building was filled with Aldo’s memories from the typologies of Northern Italian industrial landscapes, as well as that green verdigris color on the roof that came directly from an affair with a girl named Rossana at The Hotel Sirena, where the intoxicating contrast of color, between the rose of her name, her flesh and the acid green of the hotel façade still held its place firmly in his heart.61 Anton’s contribution, on the other hand, lay within the details. For example, upon entering into the rather small, square space of the hall, with its checkered floor and austere white walls, one is immediately confronted with the narrow floor to ceiling opening containing the simple, solid stairway leading up to the second floor. On either side are symmetrical doors, leading to two equal spaces to the left and right of the stair. (While Anton continues to explain, Federicoan avid doodler who had now joined the group, grabbed the paper the others were scribbling on earlier and began to sketch the floor plan for Jo on the back.) Anton suggested that the dramatic effect lie in the choice imposed by the symmetry, along with the element of concealment and compression in the narrow stairway, providing a sense of ‘waiting’ in the architecture itself.62 Now that those feminists had taken over, this subdued masterly balance was being disrupted with decoration, manifestos and their ethics. There was a pink Murano glass chandelier hanging in the hall, for heaven’s sake! It had become campy and tasteless.

Jo was confused, because he remembered Bee describing a very different reading of Aldo Rossi’s discussion of the villa project, specifically a corridor,

from

his

writing

in

A

Scientific

Autobiography. She said that Rossi suggested we begin at the heart of events that occur on the interior- conflicts, love affairs, and move towards thoughts about construction and detail.63 She even admitted to something she had overlooked (or ignored) in the past, precisely because of the norm of what architecture should be and how it should be made. Bee said that as she re-read Rossi’s decisions,

thoughts she

behind realized

his that

architectural she

had

misinterpreted his use of the theater as a model for his architecture. She had assumed that he 17

designed spaces as if they were neutral stages to act as the background for the events of life (similar to what Anton described), BUT he actually began with the events themselves! He said that without an event, there is no architecture, not the other way around! 64 William chimed in to the conversation and claimed that he was OBVIOUSLY responsible for the theatricality of the spaces. William spoke of the drama of uncertainty found in the priority of spatiality over function. He said in its simplicity, the use of space in the unit is unreconciled, in a state of “To be or not to be?”, to allow for what his friend Aldo called the ‘unforseeable’ in life.65 With this renovation; however, it seems rather “To be QUEER or not to be? THAT is the question!” He lamented the Sapphic theme of the new mosaic floor tiles in the watery space of one of the two large symmetrical rooms and complained that Sappho’s fragments (and not his Sonnets) were given ‘pride of place’ in the poetry corner. In Greek!66 William assured Jo, however, that he had nothing against the new specificity that this space had acquired, now that it was frequented by a steady stream of naked women! “Huh, huh”, as he punched Jo quite hard in the upper arm. Jo flinched.

Of course, the greatest disruption of the renovation, according to William, was the gentlemen’s displacement from the indoor-outdoor gallery space along the rear facade. The controlled order of the solemn pillars of the small portico, aligned with all of the adjoining porticos of neighboring units, that once engendered a grand dramatic effect and spoke of permanence and stability (comparable to the uncontested lineage of the canon that the work of these gentlemen belonged to), had now become a chaotic service space, filled with paraphernalia, where practically anything (and anyone) was allowed. William asked Jo if he had seen the riffraff that was now occupying the gallery? Jo immediately thought of Ali. Another paper airplane came sailing into Jo’s path out of nowhere. Jo saw that the nearest window of the Studio Salon was now slightly open. Could SHE have overheard their conversation? He blushed again, this time out of embarrassment. As he bent down to pick up the new message, he caught a glimpse of the ceiling from the space inside, which until now, had been masked by a glare on the surface of the glass. What he saw captivated him and sent his imagination reeling. Now, he understood what Brooke had described earlier as 'an upside down silver wheat field blowing in the breeze’. He thought she had just been exaggerating to win his approval, as kids do. THIS is where the tinkling bell sounds were coming from!67 He read the note quickly and then crumpled it into his pocket.

18

all in good fun ?

“I know it is wet and the sun is not sunny, but we can have lots of good fun that is funny.” ― Dr. Seuss, ‘The Cat in the Hat’ rightful place ?

“In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds.” ― Martin Luther King, Jr. unnecessary effort ?

“Unwearied ceaseless effort is the price that must be paid for turning faith into a rich infallible experience.” ― Mahatma Gandhi order was restored ?

“He woke up blinking with a slight pain in his head and opened his eyes upon a world boiling in chaos in which everything was in proper order.” ― Joseph Heller, ‘Catch-22’ originally intended ?

I never intended for the Monster Ball to be a religious experience, it just became one. ― Lady Gaga68

The others looked at him, waiting for a report, but Jo responded only with an innocent grin.

One of them said something derogatory about the “Women Only” sign Jo had encountered at his arrival, and Jo innocently asked, “But isn’t this, in fact, a separatist group of sorts, too?”

His question was met with incredulity and suspect. Jo could feel the sense of comradery begin to shift into something more like indignation and mistrust. Why did he have to go and spoil everything? And we were having so much fun too!69 This feeling is confirmed, as Jo overhears Luchino’s response to Federico, who has just recounted Jo’s question in Italian.

“Vaffanculo!”70 By now, it is getting late and Jo checks the time only to see that the Open House ended over an hour ago! He had intended to try to catch someone on their way out, in order to slip inside for a quick peek. His mobile phone also displays the notification “LOW BATTERY- 10% of battery remaining”, and he sees that he has one missed call and another text from Seh. Jo! Where R U? Sorry about the mix-­‐up. Why didn’t you just come in? I’m on my way with Bee to meet a couple of guest researchers from Yorkshire at this fantastic pizza place, Ristorante Pizzeria da Mimmo in Città Alta (via Colleoni n. 17).71 Come join us!

Call me if you get lost.

19

Outro Jo decides to make a swift exit and try to catch a taxi to the restaurant. He remembers that the taxis only take cash, and he’s afraid that he doesn’t have enough to get into town. His ‘friends’ have begun to go about their business, as if Jo is no longer there, and are now reluctant to loan him the money. Eventually, they scrape together enough to send him on his way.

Jo takes one last look at the row house, as the taxi driver starts the meter. The car pulls off and he sinks into the seat thinking about his day, with Casa Unifamiliare disappearing into the distance. First, he met the aggressive friendliness of a gossipy conservative, biopolitical activist nun, who wanted to marry him off. Then there was the grilling by a precocious 10 year-old, who questioned his research capabilities and explained the effects of neoliberal capitalism on educational institutions (through a pond metaphor no less!). Lastly, he was confronted with the complacency and sexism of this reactionary grappa-drinking ‘old boy’s club’. He wondered if his friend had any idea what kind of trouble she was causing? Not only was the renovation illegal, but the three follies she had installed in the garden had become like stones cast into a still body of water, with the rippled effects radiating outward and overlapping. They were like tiny disruptions that set a whole string of events in motion. Just during one afternoon, he had experienced first-hand how the mere presence of this project got in under people’s skin, and had the bump on his head and bruise on his arm to prove it!

Jo knew that Bee’s intentions were what she called ‘desirable reconstructions’, which not only involved a criticality toward situations with power relations she identified as problematic, but also included a proposal of new possibilities with more ethical alternatives. He also knew that she had an inclination for drama and liked to break the rules, a.k.a. problematic relation to authority! She loved to tell stories with all kinds of fantastic twists and turns, which seemed innocent enough, but she still somehow managed to find ways to undermine power, whether at the scale of unjust world orders, sluggish/indifferent institutional systems or simply in the language she used. Bee, the avid bather that she was, always ‘dove in’ head first too.72 This was surely going to get her into trouble one day!

Suddenly, Jo felt the crumpled paper in his pocket and remembered! What about Ali?! I never actually got to speak to her. He took out the note again, and this time noticed that there was something else scribbled on the back, a phone number! He fumbled for his mobile, quickly entered the number and listened in anticipation as it rang. Finally, a voice answered “Hello?”

Then Jo heard a strange beeping sound, followed by silence…. his battery was dead.

20

Abstract I began my PhD project on this date and the idea for “locking myself in” is inspired by the story in a recent novel by Ali Smith, There but for the, Great Britain: Hamish Hamilton (Penguin Books), 2011.

2 The mailbox is made of electro-galvanized 20-gauge steel with a durable powder coated finish and includes 5” detachable magazine hooks (11” x 14 ½” x 3 ½”).

3 My definition of a critical fiction is a method or writing experiment that opens up to imaginary locations, allowing us to explore positions other than our own, to discover other stories and to propose ways in which our experience of the everyday might be altered. By using elements of fiction and theory, telling stories while formulating critical arguments, this method borrows from many writing practices. See also Rolf Hughes “The Poetics of Practice-Based Research” in Hilde Heynen (ed.), Unthinkable Doctorates? Special Issue of The Journal of Architecture, 11(3), 2006, 283-301.

4 The visitor’s interest and position in relation to an unknown house has filmic references in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954) and François Ozon’s Dans la maison (2012). Thank you to Daniel Koch, who offered me the challenge at a seminar to write this paper.

5 Here the term ‘desires’ encompasses the many desires that run throughout the text: to connect, to belong, to provoke, to resist, to transform, to transgress, to question, to understand, to hope, to trust, to fit in, to make amends, to preserve, to heal, to experience, to express, to know… I am interested in the element of vulnerability and the possibilities of empowerment that lie within desire. In desiring something (or someone), there is always a sense of anticipation and a risk of failure, rejection, loss, etc.; however, I would claim that it is a necessary risk, to fully realize empowerment.

6 Aldo Rossi, A Scientific Autobiography, Cambridge, Massachusetts & London, England: The MIT Press, 1981.

7 Rossi, 78. Rossi also wrote, ”Because every aspect of the building is anticipated, and because it is precisely this anticipation that allows for freedom, the architecture is like a date, a honeymoon, a vacation- like everything that is anticipated so that it can occur.” Rossi, 55 8 Some of the feminist/queer theory and thinkers I refer to in the text include work from Donna Haraway, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Rosi Braidotti, Judith Butler, Sara Ahmed and bell hooks.

Likewise, my research builds on previous (and current) work done within feminist architecture theory and practices. For a recent review of where feminist architecture research and practice lies today, see Jane Rendell, ‘Critical Spatial Practices: Setting Out a Feminist Approach to some Modes and what Matters in Architecture’ in Lori Brown, ed., Feminist Practices: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Women in Architecture, Surrey, UK: Ashgate, 2011.

1

Intro Aldo Rossi owned many dogs, while a white bull terrier figures in many of his skethes and drawings, a notable one is titled I Love This Dog, from 1990. Just as Rossi’s dog often appears in his work as an important source of inspiration, I also wanted to include my four-legged family, three Cornish Rex cats. I am influenced by feminist Donna Haraway’s The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness, Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press, 2003, and the importance she places on our interspecies relationships. Queer theorist Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick also incorporates her cat into a piece entitled ”Pedagogy of Buddhism” in Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity, Durham & London: Duke University Press, 2003.

10 In Italian, the name Caprice means whimsical.

11 My 1-year seminar was staged as an ’Open House’ event in a borrowed office space in central Stockholm, where the participants were led through a fictional guided tour of the rooms according to the Rossi floor plan. The invaluable comments from my respondent Ramia Mazé, and ideas from the consequent discussion at this event, have helped generate this text.

12 The quote comes from lines of dialogue in a novel by Ali Smith and concisely sums up my own intentions with my research. Ali Smith (2011), 352.

13 The descriptions of Jo’s and Seh’s ongoing PhD work are describing aspects of my own work, the active use of writing ’styles’ as a methodology and the intentional disruption of norms and assumptions within architectural research, practice and pedagogy.

14 In an earlier writing experiment around the fictive ’Rossi renovation’ for a course assignment in the ResArc (Swedish research school) ”Approaches” PhD course, I received comments from my colleagues Jo Liekens (SINT-LUCAS) and Sepideh Karami (UMA) that have been inspiration in the 9

21

development of this current text. However, I must make clear that the figures in this fiction are totally my creation, and do not in any way represent my colleagues’ opinions or characters. The fictional characters (Jo and Seh) are my own alter egos. Jo, born biologically female, is an androgynous person who passes as a man. Jo uses the pronoun he and his gender is understood differently, depending on who he comes in contact with. The character is purposefully left ambiguously somewhere between a butch and a transman, as the gender performativity of this character (and the feminism of this project) belongs to a queer ’Butlerian’ feminism of gender complexitiy, rather than a more liberal feminism focused primarily on ’gender equality’.

Mixed signals 15 Excerpt of an email from Jo Liekens dated 3 December 2012, in response to my course assignment describing the renovation of the interior spaces of Rossi’s row house with room specifications.

16 Although trained in an undergraduate architectural education that followed strong currents in the tectonic and phenomenological direction, I find it problematic that the architectural theory ascribing to a more phenomenological approach today is complacent with its inherited gender blindness, unproblematized universal (male) subject, and unwittingly stuck in the ideas of race and class from the French Imperialist (yet poetic) world of Gaston Bachelard, despite that the rest of the world seems to be aware of the implications of post-structural theory. I suggest a disruption in this lineage. For a thorough discussion on my attempt to reconcile phenomenology and a post-structuralist, queer feminist theory, see ”Do Bodies Matter?: Stone, water, light, skin and material performativity in Therme Vals”. (http://su.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?searchId=1&pid=diva2:197264) The work of feminist scholars, Judith Butler and Sara Ahmed, both fall into what I would call ‘poststructural queer theory’, with Butler’s Gender Trouble problematising the assumed binary, heterosexual relationship between sex/gender/desire. For Judith Butler’s discussion on the universal subject in phenomenology, see Judith Butler, “Sexual Ideology and Phenomenological Description: A Feminist Critique of Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception,” eds. Jennifer Allen and Iris Marion Young, The Thinking Muse: Feminism and Modern French Philosophy, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1989 (1981), 85-100. And for Sara Ahmed’s queering of the ‘straight line’ of phenomenological orientation, see Sara Ahmed, Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others, Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2006.

17 I use the name Bee for the fictional version of myself, partly as it is one of the few nicknames I’ve been given in the past, partly as a reminder of the serious environmental problem we are facing today with the disappearance of bees from the ecosystem (due to many industrial pesticides by Monsanto!) and lastly as a reference to a character from a favorite childhood TV sitcom, Aunt Bee on ‘The Andy Griffith Show’. In an article from The Los Angeles Times about the final years of actress Francis Bavier’s life, who played Aunt Bee, she is described as a recluse cat lady who lived in a sparsely furnished home with 14 cats. “Evidently, the reclusive actress spent most of her time in a large back room plainly furnished with a bed, a desk, a television and an end table, where she kept her reading and opera glasses, black licorice and a bell.” From “'Andy Griffith' Aunt Bee Recluse in Final Years”, Los Angeles Times, January 17, 1990, http://articles.latimes.com/1990-01-17/entertainment/ca-368_1_aunt-bee (accessed 3 November 2013).

18 My colleague, Katerina Bonnevier, describes ’folly’ in an assignment for our master’s architectural studio as follows: ”Folly means madness, and in architecture “a whimsical or extravagant structure built to serve as a conversation piece, lend interest to a view, commemorate a person or event, etc.

Follies are pavilions without a functionalist function. They are eccentric architectures filled only secondly by use. They are connected to the idea of the picturesque (the English landscape garden, traditional Chinese architecture), taming/framing/decorating nature to give birth to feelings, desires and dreams.”

19 This ’masking technique’ is inspired by the Beijing based Chinese performance artist Liu Bolin, also known as ”The Invisible Man”, who paints himself ’invisible’ within different contexts for self-portraits, as a means of silent protest, to call attention to the lack of protection Chinese artists receive from the government and as a reaction to the demolition of one of Asia’s largest artist’s villages, Suo Jia Cun in

22

2005. It suggests a creative (even if fanciful) way to resist building codes or regulating aesthetic standards.

Another example of ’invisible’ architecture is the recent project by the NY-based firm stpmj for the Folly 2014 design competition in Socrates Sculpture Park, Queens, N.Y. (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/21/invisible-barn_n_5170413.html?utm_hp_ref=arts&ncid=tweetlnkushpmg00000067) 20 Jo’s character is reminiscent of Italo Calvino’s stories of Marcovaldo 1963, a poor rural man struggling with the trials and tribulations of urban life in an industrial Northern Italian city.

21 Bruno Munari, Supplement to the italian dictionary, Mantova: Corraini Editore, 2002 (1963), 22.

22 The catholic nun’s standard dress can be either a simple head veil or the more covering coronet and wimple. I choose to use the generic term habit, because I like the implications of the word habit to the ’habits’ and/or dogmatic (unproblematised) opinions that may come with the indoctrination of organized religion. While I am aware of the risk of perpetuating stereotypes in using an elderly Italian Catholic nun character to represent skepticism over less traditional lifestyles, my intention is to raise questions and make visible the ways in which a history of oppression and discrimination still affect daily lives today. Likewise, the character’s position is more complex, as she also participates in biopolitical activism. Whether politically conscious or unconscious, this woman’s act of ’seed saving’ can be seen as biopolitical activism. For a thorough argumentation about the current political and ethical implications of biopolitics, see Rosi Braidotti, (2006), Transpositions: On Nomadic Ethics, Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Likewise, we do not know whether or not Anna realizes that Jo’s sex is not biologically male, when she tries to pair him up with the PhD student. This provides an opening for the character and a chance to reflect on the assumptions we may make as readers.

23 Translation: ”Excuse me, the tomatoes of my family. I save them. Understand?”

24 Excerpt from a previous writing experiment, in the form of ‘room specifications’ for the fictive Rossi renovation, this section comes from the description of the entry hall. floor: The floor is covered in alternating white Carrera marble and black granite floor tiles in a checkerboard pattern. The tiles are 150mm square, 9mm thick. Within the white tiles, the word “privilege” is engraved and then filled with a matt white porous composite, polished smooth so as to be almost invisible. (However, every time the floor is cleaned, the moisture makes the word “privilege” in the white tiles temporarily turn dark and become visible until it dries again.)

25 Translation: ”She is a little crazy, no? CRAZY!” 26 Translation: ”Um, the architect?”

27 This refers to a recent media explosion over a homophobic statement made by Guido Barilla, chairman of the Italian and European food company Barilla S. p. A.. He stated in an interview on 25 September 2013 that he supported the ’traditional family’ and that no gay families would be represented in his advertisements. He continued by stating “If gays don’t like it, they can always eat another brand of pasta.”

28 Translation: “Beats me! No! I don’t know, but… yes, my friend Caprice, she says that this architect?

She is different! But nice. She is not married, no children, and with all of the cats, all of the women?

Maybe, she doesn’t like ‘Barilla pasta’? Understand? You are a friend? Are you married?”

29 Translation: ”And everything, Greece, Greece, Greece! She is crazy for Greece!”

30 This is perhaps more of a comment on the very sober ‘norms’ of exterior color in public places in a local Swedish context, rather than an Italian one, where the subdued colors of the facades perform a ’disciplining’ function. I credit this idea to Irene Molina who formulated this idea so clearly in a conversation during a Kvinnors Byggforum editorial seminar in Uppsala on 20 September 2013.

31 There is a ”rent a cat” sign located outside of the small independent Atlantis bookshop in Oia, on Santorini island, Greece. One of the founders, Craig Walzer, has been featured in a TED Talk, ”Artful Lies and Shelves of Fiction” (http://tedxtalks.ted.com/video/Artful-Lies-and-Shelves-ofFict;search%3ACraig%20Walzer). I learned of this project from Greek photographer, Tzeli Hadjidimitriou, find it inspiratonal and hope to visit it in person one day.

32 A QR (Quick Response) code is a type of barcode that may be scanned electronically through a mobile phone app to quickly provide data in a paperless ’ecofriendly’ manner.

33 The reference to heirloom seeds is a reaction to the pending EU legislature ”The Plant Reproductive Material Law” to criminalize nearly all seeds and plants not registered with the government.

23

(http://www.naturalnews.com/040214_seeds_European_Commission_registration.html) It is also in support of activist groups such as Navdanya, an organic movement led by Dr. Vandana Shiva, against what she calls the world’s ”violent economic order” due to capitalist patriarchy, especially multinational agricultural companies like Monsanto. For more information see: http://www.navdanya.org/organic-movement 34 The follies described in the garden are greatly inspired by the studio projects of two of my former master’s architecture students, Anja Linna and Jenny Andreasson, with their ”Bower of Confessions” and ”Mobile Literary Salon” that are described in more detail in one of my earlier papers "Vanity (Fair), conflict, dreams and drama on an ordinary day at The Beastlet".

35 The photo described is mine, a memento of special sentimental value, found at an outdoor flea market in Athens in 2011, and my contribution to the Gabinetto dei Segreti.

Words of Wisdom Gavin Butt’s notion of ’scholarly flirtation’ comes to mind, both in the literal sense, but also in his argument that we have an ’ethical imperative’ to challenge the seriousness of traditional forms of critical writing. He suggests scholarly flirtation as a playful way to experiment without worrying so much about possible failure. I tend to see much of my own writing in this manner. Gavin Butt, ”Scholarly Flirtations: The Serious Scholar”, summit: non-aligned initiatives in education culture in collaboration with Goldsmiths College, London University, 2007, http://summit.kein.org/node/234 (accessed 16 August 2013).

37 Ali Smith, ’Ali Smith: Style vs content? Novelists should approach their art with an eye to what the story asks’, the guardian, Saturday 18 August 2012, http://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/aug/18/ali-smith-novelists-approach-art (accessed 27 September 2013).

38 The quotes are taken from an article by Ali Smith that argues for the importance of ’style’ as a means to think critically and to enhance the message of the ’content’. This argument is central to the work I do, and specifically to this text, that uses different writing ’styles’ to formulate and convey critical arguments that are more pedagogical and accessible. Perhaps the most important observation Smith makes is ”But everything written has style. The list of ingredients on the side of a cornflakes box has style. And everything literary has literary style. And style is integral to a work. How something is told correlates with – more – makes what's being told. A story is its style. A style is its story, and stories – like onions, like the Earth we live on, like style – are layered, stratified constructs. Style is never not content.”

39 bell hooks, Teaching Critical Thinking: Practical Wisdom, New York and London: Routledge, 2010, 61.

40 The character Brooke Bayoude is taken directly from Ali Smith’s novel There but for the, 2011. All of the biographical information comes directly from Smith’s story, while the subsequent dialogue is entirely my own. In Smith’s novel, we learn that the character Anna has given Brooke, who is obsessed with collecting facts, a Moleskin book marked History as a present, to write her own story. (Smith, 302) Also, Smith cleverly uses the narrative to place the focus on the ’whiteness’ of the other characters, with its privileges and ignorances, rather than making the Bayoude characters ’different’. For instance, Hannah, one of the guests at Gen’s dinner party asks the Bayoude’s if they have ever seen a real tiger at home. To which they reply, “Not in Yorkshire.” (Smith,127) 41 Filling the function of the ’Catholic confession’, God has been replaced by a goddess in this contemporary folly.

42 In a lecture held at Stockholm University on 23 April 2013, "The Expanding Field of Education as Creative Practice," Irit Rogoff, professor at Goldsmiths University of London, called the Bologna shift a ”Cognitive Capitalist Take-Over,” pointing to the introduction of tuition fees and standardization as main culprits.

43 “Thus, instructions and rules about writing are not neutral or innocent guidelines, but are shaped by political forces. The contemporary neoliberal ideology, driven by ratings, rankings, and counting, risks suppressing the critical potential of the contribution of writing methodologies in feminist studies and other critical fields.” Mona Livholt’s, Emergent Writing Methodologies in Feminist Studies, NY and London: Routledge, 2012. In her introduction, 'Contemporary Untimely Post/Academic WritingsTransforming the Shape of Knowledge in Feminist Studies', 3.

36

24

In Smith’s novel There but for the, the reader learns that Brooke is often shamed by her school teacher, Mr. Warburton, for her cleverness. However, the reader may infer that this bullying may also have something to do with racism and is internalized by the child. (Smith, 281-285) 45 A play on the sound of bell hooks’ name, the actual reference for thoughts on critical thinking and engaged pedagogy. See hooks, 2010.

46 Excerpt from a previous writing experiment, in the form of ‘room specifications’ for the fictive Rossi renovation, this section comes from the description of the entry hall. wall: The wall containing the opening to the stair is left unfinished, bare gypsum board.

The remaining three walls are plastered, sanded and painted in a warm light brown/grey, semi-gloss. On these three walls hang portraits in faux gilded gold frames, containing holograms. The images change as the viewer changes position. Louis Kahn becomes Anne Tyng, Le Corbusier becomes Eileen Gray, Robert Venturi becomes Denise Scott Brown, Mies Van der Rohe becomes Lilly Reich and Frank Lloyd Wright becomes his feminine counterpart in drag.

The portraits are meant to address the old myth of the brooding, solitary creative genius (often male) and even the tendency of the media to appoint and celebrate a single figure (also often male) as the creative genius in architecture offices, while ignoring the contributions of many individuals who have done much of the work. In 2013, an online petition was launched, demanding that Denise ScottBrown be given the Pritzker Architecture Prize retroactively as the equal partner and collaborator of her husband Robert Venturi, who won the prize in 1991. Only Venturi was recognized despite that all of the work was the result of a joint effort.

47 See note 14, describing Jo’s gender expression.

48 Brooke confuses the term she has been told ‘drag king’ for a more exciting version, ‘dragon king’. ”A drag king is a female (usually) who dresses up in recognizably male costume and performs theatrically in that costume.” Judith Halberstam, (1998), Female Masculinity, Duke University Press: Durham, N.C., 232.

49 The decision to test a full-scale experiment of a “Women Only” separatist space at my 1-year seminar, and the initial obstacle of Jo in this text, originally comes from earlier writing on a separatist swimming group on Lesbos, Greece. However, while I recognize the need for- and importance of temporary separatist spaces of different kinds, it stands in clear conflict with the ideas of queer theory. I do not agree with exclusion on the basis of sex/gender, but I think it can be interesting and useful to confront people, every now and then, with something so sedimented and taken for granted, to remind us of the privileges and/or discriminations that come with these categories.

50 See notes 22 and 33.

51 My personal experience of sending anything, from a postcard to a package, to friends in Italy is that it takes a minimum of 3 months to arrive and a maximum of never.

44

Tall Tales Aldo Rossi mentions the German Nobel prize winning physicist Max Planck’s Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers and Italian 14th century poet Dante Alighieri’s Commedia as inspirations to his own writing of A Scientific Autobiography. Rossi, 1.

53 The practice of making a round, where everyone is given a chance to speak, comes from feminist practices of the past, typically found in ’consciousness raising’ sessions, with the intention of making a safe space for everyone to take part. I also think of this as an important aspect in pedagogical situations.

54 I have attended full moon beachfire ceremonies where a similar ritual was performed in Skala Eressos, Lesvos, Greece, led by astrologer and spiritual healer Halla Himintungl, a.k.a. Miss Moon. As physicist, Isabelle Stengers writes, ”Rituals are modes of gathering, the achievement of which is that it is no longer I, as a subject, as meant to belong to nobody but myself, who thinks and feels… What the ritual achieves could perhaps be compared to what physicists describe as putting ’out of equilibrium’, out of the position which allow us to speak in terms of psychology, or habits, or stakes. Not that they forget about personal stakes but because the gathering makes present – and this is what is named magic – something which transforms their relation to the stakes they have put up.” Isabelle Stengers, ’Introductory Notes on an Ecology of Practices’, in Cultural Studies Review, Vol. 11, No. 1, March 2005, 195.

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Aldo Rossi often uses literary references from the fiction of Herman Melville, William Shakespeare and Anton Chekhov, among others, throughout A Scientific Autobiography.

56 This passage denotes, what I would venture to call, the ’familiar’ situation of finding oneself walking the dangerous line between the benefit of doubt and complicity with hegemonic power structures, in order to retain certain privileges shared by belonging to a group.

57 Luchino Visconti, Michelangelo Antonioni and Federico Fellini, are all Italian film directors mentioned by Rossi as influential to his creative work in A Scientific Autobiography.

58 This passage is a reminder of the relentless, never-ending battle against male dominated power structures and anti-feminist values, as well as a question of the security of established canons, which (uncritically) deem certain works of certain authors as ‘master works’ or ‘classics’.

59 Again, I am aware of the possible risks of stereotyping through the portrayal of the group of historical male artists as misogynists, possessing anti-feminist sentiments (although, in many cases, evidence can easily be found in support of this argument within their work), and realize the ethical difficulties in putting words into these figures’ mouths. As in the use of the other fictional characters in the narrative, these identities are temporarily ’hijacked’, not meant to represent the actual individuals.

I use them to represent not only Aldo Rossi’s own references, but a hegemonic power structure and literary/artistic canon, and to explain the original spatial arrangement and atmosphere of the row house, using some of the ideas found in Rossi’s own writing, as well as a hint at what the current renovations might entail.

60 Rossi cites Charles Olson’s account of Herman Melville’s life and work in his book Call me Ishmael as an important reference for him in understanding the relation between ‘observation and memory’.

“Even the search for the unforseen is united or reunited with some form of the real.” He asks what ‘the real’ signifies in architecture and goes on to explain the effect of his own personal memories and impressions on his architectural work, showing how the tangible and intangible are inextricably bound.

Rossi, 23-26.

61 Rossi, 25.

62 Rossi writes in A Scientific Autobiography, ”Chekhov’s interiors also more closely resemble those of villas than country houses, and they are always extremely sensitive to the seasons. The architecture remains in the small details, as if forever awaiting the sound of the shooting of the ”gull,” the light on the stair, the boat which crosses the lake as in a glass dome.” Rossi, 34.

63 “The corridor was a strip of space that seemed surrounded and gripped by private acts, unforseeable occasions, love affairs, repentances. …And especially by images which do not leave their imprint on film but which accumulate in things. For this reason, the interior is important: one must always imagine the effect produced by a person who leaves a room unexpectedly. One asks oneself whether there are adjoining rooms and similar questions, which ultimately mingle with considerations about protection against dampness, water levels, roofs, and finally, the soundness of the construction.” Rossi, 35.

64 “The theater is very similar to architecture because both involve an event- its beginning, development, and conclusion. Without an event, there is no theater and no architecture. I refer, for example, to the procession in which Hamlet’s body is carried away, or to Uncle Vanya’s solitude, or to any two people who are talking in some house with hatred or with love, and of course to the grave. Are these events, forms of functionalism, of necessity? I certainly do not think so; if the event is a good one, the scene will also be good, or it should be so.” Rossi, 48 65 Rossi uses references to Shakespeare, and specifically to Hamlet, to support his arguments throughout A Scientific Autobiography, which deals to a large extent with metaphors of the theater. In several passages, Rossi expresses contempt for the limiting ideas of the functionalists and for what he calls ”…the whole moralistic and petit-bourgeois aspect of modern architecture.” Rossi, 74. He writes, “…architecture becomes the vehicle for an event we desire, whether or not it actually occurs… the dimensions of a table or a house are very important- not, as the functionalists thought, because they carry out a determined function, but because they permit other functions. Finally, because they permit everything that is unforseeable in life.” Rossi, 3.

66 Excerpt from a previous writing experiment, in the form of ‘room specifications’ for the fictive Rossi renovation, this section comes from the description of the bathing salon. floor: The entire floor is covered in a continuous mosaic, depicting The Female Companions of Sappho, a painting by Antoine Christian Zacharie (Tony Zac, 1819-1899).

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The mosaic follows the slopes and depressions in the landscape of the floor, making small intimate pools, one large shallow gathering pool and several tiny dry islands. The water is spring water, not chlorinated. A replica of a Roman 3rd century statue of the Crouching Aphrodite, cut-off from the neck down, stands submersed in one of the smaller pools.

67 Excerpt from a previous writing experiment, in the form of ‘room specifications’ for the fictive Rossi renovation, this section comes from the description of The Studio Salon. ceiling: From the ceiling, hang thousands of thin steel lines with tiny light diodes, weighted with solid steel hooks, each holding a bell of varying sizes, shapes and sounds.

The inner ceiling of this space is a homage to feminist thinker bell hooks, with a flowing, flexible ceiling that is anything but a ‘glass ceiling’ and where the sounds of bell filter throughout the entire row house and spill into the immediate surroundings.

68 I was once asked (and dumbfounded by) the question ”Who are your ancestors?” during a pinup/review of one of my undergraduate architecture studio projects, by a highly respected critic and founder of the architecture school. When I couldn’t answer adequately, he stood up and walked out, which not only lead me to question his pedagogical savy in this particular case, but also ignited a desire to know why I found this question so puzzling. Of course, references are important, but I would suggest it is equally important to look critically at our references and sources. Which sources are considered legitimate? How is this related to canons, as well as to assumptions within academia? And how do the ’legitimate’ sources relate to norms of gender, race, class, etc.? By mixing quotes, everything from children’s author Dr. Suess to greatly respected freedom fighters to popstar diva Lady Gaga, I wish to raise the warning flag against falling into the assumption that the traditionally ’accepted’ sources (usually white, male, heterosexual thinkers) are the only legitimate and interesting ones. Also, thank you to my colleague, Carina Listerborn, who pointed out an aspect that I had overlooked in this ’ancestral’ question, that of the middle to upper-middle class, and even aristocratic, presence traditionally found within the architectural/academic ’family’.

69 I locate Jo in the position of a (reluctant) feminist killjoy. Sara Ahmed describes feminist killjoys as ’willful subjects’, or those who are willing to speak up against injustices. ”There is a political struggle about how we attribute good and bad feelings, which hesitates around the apparently simple question of who introduces what feelings to whom.” Or, more simply she puts it like this: ”You become the problem you create.” In relation to space, she writes: ”A killjoy: the one who gets in the way of other people’s happiness…. How many feminist stories are about rooms, about who occupies them, about making room?” Ahmed concludes with a proposal of willfulness as a form of intentional disloyalty. ”Willfulness could be rethought as a style of politics: a refusal to look the other way from what has already been looked over. The ones who point out that racism, sexism, and heterosexism are actual are charged with willfulness; they refuse to allow these realities to be passed over.” Sara Ahmed, ’Feminist Killjoys (And Other Willful Subjects)’, S&F Online- The Scholar & Feminist Online, The Barnard Center for Research on Women, Issue 8.3: Summer 2010, http://sfonline.barnard.edu/polyphonic/ahmed_01.htm (accessed 5 October 2013).

70 ‘Vaffanculo’ is loosely translated from Italian to the English equivalent of ’Fuck off!’

71 Thank you to Laura Macchi, an Italian-Swedish friend and native of Bergamo, who helped with local information about the area, as well as Italian proof-reading.

72 The first time I was ever directly called a feminist, was when the ’old school’ architect I worked for in college told me I was fiesty like ’one of those feminists’, because he saw me dive straight into a swimming pool, rather than testing the water with my toes and gliding in gradually ’like most women do’.

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