The Dissident Object by Muyiwa Oki

The Dissident Object

A study of Architecture and its deconstructions

The Dissident Object A study of architecture and its deconstructions

Muyiwa Oki Third Year Special study (2013)

Acknowledgements I would like to thank: My tutor Renata, My mum Laura, My friend Jasmin and, Everyone I have pestered for help in proof reading, and advise throughout this study.

Contents Introduction: The dissident object..................................................... 8 Deconstruction and its guises............................................................... 12 The application and potential of the dissident object......25 [In]Conclusion.................................................................................................. 38 Bibliography....................................................................................................... 41

Parc de la villette Bernard Tschumi 1

Splitting: Four Corners Gordon Matta-Clark 2

Novo-Sarajevo: High Houses Lebbeus Woods 3

Introduction The dissident object

“

Dissidence as an aspect of creative practice depend on at least two qualities, unpredictability and mobility, that are beyond architecture’s usual abilities

”

“

Deconstructivist architecture could initially elicit shock and gradually an appreciation of its uniqueness as the aesthetic beauty comes through. It is reminiscent of unpredictability and controlled chaos

” 2

“

Deconstruction of a text does not proceed by random doubt or arbitrary subversion, but by the careful teasing out of warring forces of signification within the text.

”

‘Toward a Dissident Architecture?’, n+1 <http://nplusonemag.com/toward-a-dissident-architecture> [accessed 21 March 2013] 2 Frampton, Kenneth, Modern Architecture: a Critical History, World of Art, 4th ed (London ; New York, N.Y: Thames & Hudson, 2007) 3 The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, 2nd ed (New York: W. W. Norton & Co, 2010) 1

This special study discusses a significant paradigm of architecture: deconstruction. There are various deconstructions in architecture. My interest is in unraveling these and in exploring whether there is an unsettling deconstructive nature inherent within architecture. The study moves between paper architecture, unbuilt and built form and theory in tracing the connections between dissidence, deconstructuvist architecture and conceptual deconstructions. My particular interest in architecture and its deconstructions stems from a much broader curiosity regarding the processes and possibilities of architectural production not only in schools of Architecture, but also in the wider context of practice in the built environment. The intention is to begin a discourse on the potential of the dissident architectural object – for an architecture that always ranges between the physical and the speculative. While the deconstructivist work of Bernard Tschumi is readily associated with the semiotic analyses of deconstruction, I am also interested in other architectures called ‘deconstructivist’ that show a tendency towards an unsettling of our preconceptions. For example, the works of Gordon Matta Clark and Lebbeus Woods. The idea of deconstruction in such work is apparent in various different ways. At first glance, every architect associated with this brand or paradigm of architecture has added a personal nuance to it, which is contradictory to Mark Wigley’s assertion in the catalogue text for the 1988 MoMA exhibition titled ‘Deconstructive Architecture’. Wigley notes that this work is not a “personal take on deconstruction...its rather the collective idea to disturb a set of deeply entrenched cultural assumptions which underline a certain view of Architecture, assumptions about order, harmony, stability”4 . For this reason, many architects like Rem Koolhaas refuse to attach their work to that of the general idea of deconstruction due to the opinions of critics such as Wigley, that this architecture isn’t personal. Deconstruction is seen in many different productions of architecture, expressed and individualised in Matta-Clark’s building cuts, in Rem Koolhaas’ “layering of opposed systems that amounts to a discontinuous object”5 with Lebbeus Wood’s highly imaginative drawings as well as with Bernard Tschumi’s concept of ‘contiguity and superimposition’ seen in the case of Parc de la Villette in Paris. Yet in order to define deconstructivist architecture or, the architecture of deconstruction, it is crucial to understand its history and pedagogy rather than focus simply on the appearances or outfits of this architecture. This discourse will start with an understanding of deconstructivist origins. It seeks to understand the involvement of French philosopher Jacques Derrida, as well as the Russian avant-garde constructivists within the subject of deconstruction and deconstructivist architectures. This study does not seek to categorise and solely give prime examples of projects that have a set of particular deconstructive characteristics, but instead to explore the extent to which the deconstructive agenda manifests itself. The range of these projects and characteristics is extensive and as such this study represents a subjective selection of those that are most intriguing and present the greatest critical opportunities.

Johnson, Philip, Mark Wigley. Deconstructivist architecture. New York [NY]: Museum of Modern Art, 1988. Print. 5 Glusberg, Jorge, Deconstruction : a student guide (London: Academy Editions, 1991) 4

The study is not a comprehensive look at Deconstructivist architecture and its relation to society, politics and culture, but rather a specific analysis of a selection of its guises. It aims to identify these guises in detail; in built architectures, in art and on paper, to elaborate on what makes them dissident according to the deconstructive agenda. Furthermore, it asks is there an affecting power of deconstructivist architecture on paper and city? In terms of the connections between deconstructive architecture and the concept of deconstruction from Derrida there is a tendency to obscure the understanding of what the potential of the deconstruction is. Peter Noever describes Woods’ propositions as Unheimlich. Unhiemlich refers to something strange, “something unknown before, and unfamiliar. When we confront strange, new, unfamiliar things, we are shocked, unsettled. Strangeness makes us come out of our familiar comfortable ways of thinking and confront new reality.”6 These ways of thinking I would argue are closer to the essence of deconstruction. In other words it could be said that not only does Deconstructive architecture stem from Derrida, it stems from paper too. It is this hidden relationship between paper architecture and deconstructive architecture I wish to explore. Paper Architecture is dissident because it is meant to be propositional as Woods explains in his project ‘Aerial Paris’: We [Architects] shouldn’t ask “what does technology tell us?” 7 We should tell technology. “So I have sent out the word on flying”8. Paper architecture obscures reality so we can dream, and become situated in it. It means it can be read and re-read according the creative users understanding of the subject portrayed. This is the potential of deconstruction: it allows you to enter the mind of the maker. In Matta Clark’s case, working in 1980’s New York at a time when architecture was “searching for a way out of its late Modernist doldrums”9 architecture and art combined to unsettle the status quo in a radical synthesis of the physical and the conceptual. His ‘Anarchitecture’ therefore could be called a dissident object. “Matta-Clark’s vision still beckons at a time when architects are again searching for ways to escape the abstractions that threaten to stifle their art. The input of a talented delinquent seems more necessary than ever.” 10 The aim of this study therefore is to investigate the ideas of deconstructive architecture, as an architecture of many deconstructions and to therefore find the potential of architecture as an object of dissidence. The dissident object can manifest itself in many different ways.

6 Noever, Peter, Regina Haslinger, and Coop Himmelblau, Architecture in transition : between deconstruction and new modernism (Munich; New York: Prestel ; Distributed in the USA and Canada by te Neues Pub. Co., 1991) p134 7 ibid p135 8 ibid p135 9 Ourrusof, Nikolai, Timely Lessons From a Rebel, Who Often Created by Destroying , Published: March 3, 2007<http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/03/arts/design/03matt.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0> [accessed 06102012] 10 ibid

Deconstruction and its guises

Exploring Deconstructivist Architecture in relation to its crucial elements(opposite)

Coop Himmelblau

Zaha Hadid

Georgii Yakulov

Alexsandr Rodchenko

Vladmir Tatlin

Kasimir Malevich

New york London

Society :

Why/how does it inform?

riv concept de from

Deconstrucivist Architects?

d ve

begins to answer why it is relevant today

Paper Architecture

polemic

nc co m fro ri de ts ep

Find Agenda

polemic

Russian Constructivism

Mark Wigleys â&#x20AC;&#x153;Alienâ&#x20AC;?

Gordon Matta Clark

Lebbues Woods

Daniel Libeskind

Frank Gehry

Rem Koolhaas

Peter Eisenmann

Bernard Tschumi

polemic

Deconstruction of language and literature

Critical Theory?

Find Agenda

metapyhsics?

Jacques Derrida Philosophy

Deconstruction and its guises

The ‘de’ in deconstruction

The history of the discourse is important because it offers a basis for us to start a critique of the architectures discussed later in the study: Tschumi’s Parc de la Villette, Matta-Clark’s cuts and Woods’ drawings. I was eager to find out how concepts are generated, and what steps are taken to achieve the dissident object. The steps are plain and simple as Tschumi explains in Architecture and disjunction. It is about using the systems in literary deconstruction and applying it to architecture.11 At first glance, it is easy to assume that the ‘de’ in deconstruction when applied in architecture, means to destroy or demolish.12 It is in fact much closer to the “original meaning of the word ‘analysis’, which etymologically means ‘to undo’ ” 13 this being the case we first look at what it means when applied to literature. Deconstruction of a text is a process by which the reader deciphers the meaning through textual oppositions, contradiction, paradoxes, absences of linguistic quirks. Jacques Derrida explains it as an “attempt to make the not seen accessible to sight”14 . A deconstructivist demonstrates that what appears to be unified and coherent, contains contradiction and conflict which the text cannot stabilize or contain. Given the provenance of deconstruction is in literature, it is only natural to question the connection between deconstruction in literature - the text as concept, and architecture - the creation of the dissident object. Is the built dissident object simply a manifestation of text? The idea that a brand of architecture might be derived from a linguistic system is problematic. The connection between the two is a little esoteric, as a set of text is not readily associated with the forms of a building, in the same way as the Cartesian grid is, or nature and organic architecture. James Wines, founder and president of SITE, a New York City based architecture and environmental arts organization, shares my scepticism regarding the relationship between deconstruction as literary criticism and as art form/movement. As he does so clearly in his analysis ‘the universal tendency to read literature in terms of cultural bias, conventional syntax, structuralist logic and rhetorical assumptions about the author’s intention are brought into question”15 This is not to say that Deconstruction’s ideas cannot be applied to buildings, it is the purpose of this chapter to highlight the ground rules of its treatment, if there are any.

Tschumi, Bernard, Architecture and disjunction (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1996) Johnson, Barbara, The critical difference : essays in the contemporary rhetoric of reading (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985) p5 13 ibid p5 14 Derrida, J, and Gayatri ,S, Of grammatology (Baltimore (Md.); London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997) p158 15 Wines , J , the slippery floor in Papadakes, A, Catherine C, and Andrew, B, Deconstruction : omnibus volume (New York: Rizzoli, 1989) p135 11 12

The ‘Derrida’ in Deconstruction

The purpose of deconstruction is to alter perception. “Derrida’s vastly intricate propositions have exerted a great influence on today’s writers and philosophers”, Wines writes, [Derrida] has pointed out that his complex readings of literature are best carried out by starting out with certain classic narrative structures.” 16 Because there is an impulse in language to identify with the classic narrative pattern – The Equilibrium, the Disruption, the Resolution, the Restored order, and New equilibrium. A set of conventional interpretations are adopted for its use. These classic narratives are what he calls ‘archetext’. It forms a matrix for his game of analysis. It is the groundwork for altering the operative meaning of the text. Here we have the first explanation of the values of practice and product that is to be repeated throughout the architectural movement. It is a prescription of the order that applies equally to the appearance of buildings. If words are used to critique words, then it is obvious that some starting points are essential to set the stage for the creation of the dissident object. It stands to reason that a similar methodology applied to architecture would call for the identification of an ‘archetext’ equivalent in terms of architecture to the ‘archetype’. In the absence of written words, a comparable tool must be substituted. In architecture, this language would most logically derive from the methods and materials of building and un-building – or in other words its history of archetypal components, systems and forms. Inspired by the observations of physics which has increasingly abandoned the orderly model of the universe for one conceived in chaos, Derrida has taken his signal from scientific research because it no longer depends on a traditional ‘centre’ as a point of departure for its investigations. Recognising that the human brain is merely a fragment of a larger scheme of infinite disorder (a rather crude instrument for filtering speculations about phenomena of which it is made), scientist and philosophers have also come to regard language as a tentative tool, Derrida took this to mean that there is no ‘absolute truth’ and revisited such dialecticians such as Hegel, Heidegger and Nietzsche in order to read their ideas in this revised context. In doing so, it became apparent that the ambiguities of language matched the ambiguities of philosophy and science and required an entirely new system of reading that would embrace the concept of universal chaos and its absent centre, in which he elaborated on seminally, in his 1966 lecture ‘Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences.’ It has been Derrida’s purpose to show that literature is just another manifestation of indeterminacy. He has proposed that life is a text and there is no meaning behind or outside this text.

Wines , J , The slippery op. cit., p.136

The Influence of MoMA This then brings us into the other branch of deconstruction; that which Mark Wigley promotes in his catalogue text for the 1988 MoMA exhibition. This exhibition plays a pivotal role in the prominence of this brand. The exhibition I shall talk about assembled a group of contemporary architects whose work Wigley describes as “a throwback to Russian constructivism and De Stijl”17 – most specifically from work of early soviet revolutionaries like Melnikov, Chernikov and Tatlin. Organized by architects Phillip Johnson and Peter Eisenman, the MoMA show was not simply a thoughtful assembly of talented architects at the time sharing the same ideals for a new type of modernism, but an event destined to result in what Anthony Vidler (a professor of architecture at Cooper Union) surmised as “a preface to the renewal of modernist forms that has, with little of the ‘unease’ Mark Wigley detected.”18 Eisenman had tried to align his work with conceptual art and linguistic theory with moderate success. Although such artists as Joseph Kosuth, Lawrence Weiner and Douglas Heubler tended to reject the efforts of all architects as traditional formalism and unsuited for inclusion within conceptualism’s ephemeral and cerebral objectives. Eisenman persisted, rationalizing his work in structuralist terms and equating it with theories of linguists and philosophers like Noam Chomsky. Several years later a great deal of new work was taking form. Student’s drafting tables - an architectural trend’s truest barometer19 constituted fragmentation and disjunction, instead of pediments and columns of Post – Modernism (Po-Mo). There had begun crumbling models of disjointed and warped edifices, without traces to history (except maybe constructivism). At the same time Robert Venturi’s post-modernist take on architecture that represented more of a traditional style of architecture. His thesis of complexity and contradictory architecture that derives form from ‘the everyday world’ ‘vulgar and disdained’, was beginning to lose its spark among the student ranks. And with the tendency of the press to favour the more audacious and photogenic kinds of architecture for attention, It meant that deconstructivist architecture began to play a major role in architectural discourse. Eisenman identifies this new wave, as both an interesting revision to modernism and as a link with Derrida. What distinguishes this recent work from Russian Constructivism, is the “use of certain formal devises – rotated axes, shattered grids, crossed beams tilted walls and radical juxtaposition of materials”20 that appear to violate the more orderly and ideological theme of its original sources. It is open whether these distortions are more extreme than those of the past. But we shall assume that these advocates of revised constructivism demonstrate irreverence for the tradition post and lintel structure and conventional equilibrium that were not characteristics of the work of Chernikov and Melnikov.

Johnson, Philip, and Mark Wigley, Deconstructivist architecture (New York [NY]: Museum of Modern Art, 1988) 18 MutualArt.com [http://www.mutualart.com/OpenArticle/-Deconstructivist-architecture/622406E7D4185665] accessed 301212 19 Wines , J , The slippery op. cit., p.136 20 Glusberg, Jorge, Deconstruction : a student guide (London: Academy Editions, 1991) 17

The Russian Constructivism revolution We enter a stage, where it is vital to understand the link of Russian Constructivism to deconstructivism. “Constructivism never admits the fixing of forms”21 writes Moisei Ginzburg in a remark that reminds us of the discontinuity represented in deconstruction. Form is unknown, ‘x’, which always has to be evaluated anew by the architect. We therefore have to study not just elements of architecture, but methods of transformation of those elements to understand how changes in the brief must affect the form. “Three points are vital”22, Gizburg stresses that this method of formal transformations be understood as an essential component of the architects working tools; that this transformation process is never just an aesthetic one but involves reorganization of the working, constructive elements of the building; and “that what we are changing is the material object itself, but this is done in context of its essential purpose and of its perception by the building user” 23 This is the point where the particular concerns of the Leningrad architect Yakov Chernikov are important, due to the formal characteristics connecting his architecture, to that of the projects exhibited at the 1988 MoMA show. His theory on the role of the machine as the proper inspiration and logical paradigm of contemporary architecture was independently created. Synthesizing formal and theoretical principles derived variously from suprematism – the art movement that focused on basic geometric forms painted in a limited colour range, and from mechanical engineering. Additionally, Chernikov was a proponent of a course/programme focused more exclusively on architectural training, as he believed that the replacement of outdated forms in architecture can only be achieved through radical reconstruction of the basic architectural means and devices. The fundamental elements of constructivism consist of all the various unions of elements which make up a structure. As such, the following formal relationships of these elements are recognized as the basic principles of constructivism: Insertion, clamping, twisting, embracing, mounting, bending, coupling, peircing, understood to be the elements that make up a structure. All these fundamental elements are in essence simple, but they can create complex combinations as evidenced in his ‘Architectural Fantasies’ (1933). The elements of Chernikov’s brand of architecture are yet to emerge and will be the result of the limitless varying of the abstract non objective forms which are at architecture’s disposal. Eisenman’s and Chernikov’s experiences support the notion that there is a consciousness of the architect to align his work with linguistic, philosophical, mathematical agenda, to imbue it with deeper meaning. A deconstructionist’s agenda justifies what he does - the moves he makes - as seen with Eisenman, and Chernikov. To say that deconstruction is not of Derrida maybe wrong; it can also be said that it is not of Russian constructivism. To further analyze deconstruction and to identify its roots an understanding of its guises is needed in order to investigate why Wigley is so in favour of this ‘alien’ that disturbs “assumptions about order, harmony and stability”24

Cooke, Catherine, Russian avant-garde art and architecture (London; New York, N.Y., U.S.A.: Academy Editions and Architectural Design ; Distributed by St. Martin’s Press, 1983) p34 22 ibid 23 ibid 24 Johnson, Philip, and Mark Wigley, Deconstructivist architecture (New York [NY]: Museum of Modern Art, 1988) p20 21

Architecture and the built Environment â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Parc de la Villette

5-8. Follies at Parc de la Villette, 1984 9. Notations expanding on Tschumiâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s rhetoric (Opposite)

Superimpostion

Bernard Tschumiâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Rhetoric

Cross-Programming Trans- Programming Dis-Programming

Strategies for Disju nc tio n

contiguity

Event

an t

i-a ut on om

ta en gm fra

n tio

Space an t

i-s t

ru ct ur e

Movement Vector and Envelopes Programme and Juxtaposition

Concept Form

Content

Reciporicty

ve rsu

Indifference

Context Conflict

rsu ve

ve rsu

Concept

Programme

“

Everything depends on how one sets it to work. The way forward is to transform concept and little by little, to produce new configurations: this is ‘la double séance’, a writing that is both within and striving to escape the inherited infrastructure of the imagination

”

Parc de la Villette contrasts completely with the everyday public park, draped in strange network of bright red structures. Its creator – Bernard Tschumi, admonished that it is “not for ordered relaxation and self-indulgence but interactivity and exploration.”26 The park built from 1984 -1987 is intellectually and visually stimulating, containing themed gardens, playgrounds for children, music, scientific facilities and 35 other architectural follies. It was modelled with a specific aim – to prove that it is possible to construct a complex architectural organisation without resulting to the Vitruvian triad of COMMODITY: FIRMNESS: DELIGHT. La Villette was a tactical experiment; “an initiative without a label”27, a statement that architecture can be linguistics in space. The mega-dimensions (railway line, highways, industrial slaughter houses and canals) that conditioned the immediate context, allowed La Villette to harbour the notion of discontiguity. The notion that aims to continue the fabric of the city in a discontinuous manner. Tschumi established key strategies to begin with; a marriage of both the old and the new. Similar to Haussmann’s Boulevard of Paris and the Manhattan grid.

Massey, Doreen B, For Space (London ; Thousand Oaks, Calif: SAGE, 2005) Tschumi, Bernard, and N.Y.Museum of Modern Art, The Manhattan transcripts ,(London; New York, NY: Academy Editions ; Distributed to the trade in the USA by St. Martin’s Press, 1994) 27 Tschumi, Bernard. Bernard Tschumi Totally Generic. SCI-Arc Media Archive. Southern California Institute of Architecture. 06 Oct. 2010. <http://sma.sciarc.edu/video/bernard-tschumi-totally-generic/>. [accessed 240213] 25 26

Principles of discontinuity and superimposition The principle of discontinuity was developed by rejecting the mixture of objective constraints evident in the majority of large scale projects. It is modelled on key strategies which are summarised as the qualities that appear specific for most of Tschumi’s works. It forms part of the condition that a building is not the same without these qualities.

Pursuit of an aesthetic experiment through movement notations

1. Space – event – movement When you have a building, it will not be the same with activity in it. Movement happens before space, the notation needed to express the space is as much a part of Architecture as the building themselves and the narrow vocabulary used in portraying it - the plan and section. To provoke this vocabulary, Tschumi draws upon the early days of filmmaking, which has much to do about distortion, superimposition and montage. Films like ‘The Cabinet of Dr Caligari ‘. This sets up a parameter to start addressing the site as sequences of movements in a space.

The internal composition of Dr caligaris Cabinet.

2. Programme and Juxtaposition Within this theme, lie three further strands - reciprocity, indifference and conflict, which are used to juxtapose variant programmes. Reciprocity is space perfectly shaped for the programme it inhabits. For example the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;ideal kitchenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;; each surface is placed to make movement within the kitchen effective. But the truth is, you also cook in the woods on a bonfire. This is indifference. The conflict is that you can cook in your living room; you can also play football in your living room, and vice versa. The relationship between space and what happens in the space is totally acceptable (Reciprocity) and so are indifference and conflict. All three work. It is for the creator of the object to choose the one that has a closer relationship with the context.

A church; something happens to it. It turns into a gym now people are voting for elections in it.

3. Conceptâ&#x20AC;&#x201C; Form

By superimposing points, lines and surfaces, discontinuous spatial forms are created. The Form and function, structure and economics, form and programme are replaced by contiguity and superimposition, as an underlining concept. Furthermore, the superimposition of programme was used and categorised into i.

Cross-Programming (cross dressing) ; 22

ii.

Trans-programming(e.g juxtaposing a programme for programme for a roller coaster)

iii.

Dis-programming (disregarding the programme entirely).

planetarium with a

The output was an idea to leave no identification between architecture and programme, just as there’s no identification between actor and character in early modern films like the Cabinet of Dr Caligari. Looking at space- event – movement (reciprocity, conflict and indifference), there is need for a moral or aesthetic judgment. Hence according to Wigley’s circumstances, a functional building can become conflicting or vice versa. Constraint oscillating between the pragmatics of built realm and the absoluteness of concept. “taken literally, the theory that the experience of architecture is an experience of space is obviously indefensible. If space were all that interested us then not only must a large part of the architects activity seem like much useless decoration, but it is even difficult to see why he should build at all..”28

Aerial view of la Villette. A composition made of lines, points and surfaces

Deconstruction in la Villette then dissolves the argument of that traditional opposition between structure and decoration, abstraction, figure and ground, form and function. By superimposing the different structures, doesn’t necessarily make a tightly woven megastructure. But the cross-programming and other intricacies, creates these rotated planes – it is something in-decidable, something that is the opposite of totality. These planes offer both form of enclosure and function as well as structure. They offer decoration as well as structure. It blurs abstraction and figuration. What makes La Villette deconstructive is the coming together of Tschumi’s architecture theory - that displaces programme in space, event and movement. Architecture practice – that causes superimposition between programmes in one or more axes to “achieve a reversal of classical oppositions and general displacement of the system”29 as Jacques Derrida wrote in his book Marges de la philosophie. Scruton, R, Deconstruction of historic concept, in Glusberg, J, Deconstruction : a student guide (London: Academy Editions, 1991) Derrida, Jacques, Marges de la philosophie (Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1982)

28 29

The Derrida link

“Method was method before it was explained as method” 30

The concept of space and the experience of space take advantage of the internal contradictions of society. A space can be conceived for a certain function and at the same time that space can experience a multitude of functions. Deconstruction in la Villette uses theory as a means to arrive at or justify architectural forms that encompass the space. Now is a good time to introduce Doreen Massey, Professor of Geography at the Open University. Her impassioned argument for the way we imagine space brings what has been at the fringe of one’s vision right to the fore. Her well-established understanding of both the challenge and potential of space are presented to us from her take on philosophy and some characterisation the 21st Century world. La Villette releases space. The game and dialogue between what existed and what was added, by bringing in those red buildings into the space, challenges our basic interpretation of the activities that take place within a park. Just as Derrida shows by his ‘deconstruction that the writing of various philosophers contain within themselves challenges to the very concept on which they are based on, so Tschumi shows that in architecture ‘deconstruction’ of the programme challenges the very ideology on which the programme itself is based on. Parts of La Villette collide with other building establishing a dialogue – creating a space, an event - a space for movement. The follies crash with the 19th Century building causing conflict. In opposition to functionalist, formalist, classical and modernist doctrines, Tschumi’s ambition is to deconstruct architectural norms in order to reconstruct architecture along different axes. To indicate that space movement and event are inevitably part of definition of architecture. And that the contemporary disjunction between use, form and social values suggests an interchangeable relation between object, movement and action. In this manner the programme becomes an integral part of the architecture, and each element of this programme becomes an element of permutation parallel to a solid element. It feels easier to accept that Architecture and philosophy could belong to the same transaction; transactions that arent seperate. The sense that they are separate is ”actually a consequence of the very contract that binds them according to complicated folds, twists, and turns that defy the institutional practices of both discourses”31

Eric Owen Moss . “Bernard Tschumi Totally Generic.” SCI-Arc Media Archive. Southern California Institute of Architecture. 06 Oct. 2010. http://sma.sciarc.edu/video/bernard-tschumi-totally-generic/. [accessed 240213] 31 Johnson, Barbara, The critical difference : essays in the contemporary rhetoric of reading (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985) 30

The

application and potential dissident object

the

Art – Gordon Matta-Clark’s practice

16 17 18 19 20 21 22

Garbage wall, 1970 Bronx Floors, 1972-3 Splitting [Four Corners], 1974 Bingo X 9ths, 1974 Days End at Hudson Pier, 1975 Conical intersects, 1975 Notation exploring Matta-Clark’s Anarchitecture (Opposite)

Days end

Re-using crumbling edifices

Leftovers/ Ambiguous

Bingo

Splitting 1974

Alchemical Processes

Building cuts Destructing

Entropy

GMCâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Anarchitecture

Examining the Neighbourhood

Archeological Excavations

Voyeurism

Loop

Social Activism Provocation

Kinaesthesia in Spaces

Anarchitecture To explore this object in a second guise, we turn to Gordon Matta-Clark -- an Artist of the 1970’s and son of surrealist painter Roberto Matta. In his short foray in the Art scene, he produced “an oeuvre of remarkable breadth, which encompassed spatial, social, and psychological experiences.”32 Matta-Clark, in the early 1970s was interested in the idea of entropy, the metamorphic gaps, and the leftover and ambiguous spaces -- what he called ‘Anarchitecture.’ He is established for his affecting use of the urban landscapes, his site specific works in New York and abroad. He conceived an idea of art, via its natural ties with architecture, to form his artistic processes. We celebrate the radical and subvervise nature of his work seen in the various media: drawings, photographs, films, notebooks, and sculptures, fashioned from his acclaimed building cuts. We begin the discussion of his Art within the realms of the dissident object, as there’s a wealth of evidence owed to his relationship with architecture and space, community and events. His acclaimed building cuts -- such as Splitting –“wherein he excised variously shaped voids from the walls or floors of abandoned or soon-to-be demolished building in an archetypal American homestead. He revealed these cuts to create spatial conditions that would radically alter the perception of the building - its surrounding environment to result in the shift of everyday experience into extraordinary visual and kinetic confrontations.”33 Matta-Clark challenged his audiences to question the relationship between the constructive and destructive with his building cuts. For his work at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) Chicago in 1978, he exposed the foundation and substance of what had been an entirely conventional space to create an “entirely new and extraordinary visual experience” 34 His first foray into the world of architecture and social activism seen in –‘Garbage wall’ and ‘dumpster jukebox’, made on location with objects on site, is reminiscent to the activities of Marcel Duchamp of Dada and Kurt Schwitters creator of ‘Merz’. The Art movement that preceded him. The similarities with Schwitters don’t stop there. Schwitters adopted an un-dogmatic approach to art, and attempted to democratise it by using anything to model his art collages. Similarly, Matta-Clark saw art as an outlet for everyone, not only the rich, but for those living under the bridges of downtown New York. He believed “that, in any architectural program, plan for life, plan for community, or plan for art, what must come first and foremost is the ‘you’ – the individual.” 35

‘Gordon Matta-Clark: “You Are the Measure’, ’Artdaily’ <http://www.artdaily.com/index.asp?int_ sec=11&int_new=22966&int_modo=2#.UUuYOheeOSo[/url/> [accessed 21 March 2013] 33 Lee, Pamela M, and Gordon Matta-Clark, Object to be destroyed : the work of Gordon Matta-Clark (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001) 34 <http://www.artdaily.com/index.asp?int_sec=11&int_new=22966&int_modo=2#.UTLV_aKeOSo[/url] />[accessed 02032013] 35 Crawford, Jane. October 10, 1997. “Jane Crawford Gordon Matta-Clark.” In SCI-Arc Media Archive. Southern California Institute of Architecture. <http://sma.sciarc.edu/video/janecrawford-gordon-matta-klark/>. [accessed 02032013) 32

Critically, we ought to skip back to New York and the art scene of the 1970s to explore the reason for his practices. Jane Crawford his widow, explains that in the 1970’s art was rebelling against the institution, you had to go looking for it. There was financial depression in Newyork. The US economy was in grief due to the OPEC crisis of 1973, causing stagflation and a sense of malaise. President Nixon’s ‘Watergate’ scandal coupled with the raging war in Vietnam, bred cynism, sceptism and resentment towards the US government. This resulted in the liberation of cultural communities, as they became forgotten aspect of the city. Matta-Clark and his circle of artist friends, were their own support group, as Crawford testifies “Whoever had money, will cook and we would all go to that persons place for a meal and dancing. Inside this little circle evolved a pot for sharing of ideas. It was very pure.” 36 One begin to understand the reason for a new direction in art and indeed architecture. Every living organism in the 1970’s was anti-establishment, due to its overt failures in policy making.

Matta-Clarking Matta-Clark’s image of himself as the alchemist - someone who could transform the garbage laden city into space with profound kinaesthetic quality, mirrors the ethos of the art movement that preceded him. Schwitters’ ‘Merz’ art which came as a side note to Duchamp’s Dada involvement, made use of garbage and found objects that went through a similar alchemical transformation . Matta-Clark’s urban alchemy (the Cuts) protests against the different level of housing of the very poor versus the very rich – and seeks to situate us within it. Just as Dada movement aimed to protest against the constraints of “Art” by giving it a new meaning and engaging our perceptual field. He would look for a building (through his friends Holly and Horace Solomon), in a neighbourhood on its last legs hoping for restoration, and proceeded to removing it like an archaeologist. Conventionally the building represented someone’s hope. A collection of these hopeful buildings, give birth to a neighbourhood. A neighbourhood is constructed with much aspiration that it will live and be prosperous. Many people are involved with the building process and construction of that neighbourhood. But, at a certain point the texture changes. It no longer fulfils the needs of that neighbourhood – why? It stops evolving. It stops serving those needs as protector. Therefore, by making these archaeological excavations, Matta-Clark gave us an opportunity to really examine the layers of the fabric of the neighbourhood and the society at large in an unorthodox fashion. How? You can see where there’s good craftsmanship and the contrary. 36

ibid

You are granted access (especially in Days end at Hudson Pier), to something that we ought not to see. A view through the floor for instance reveals strata that are unknown to us by default. ‘Splitting’ was his first dissenting art in an archetypal edifice. The conventional house was situated in Englewood, New Jersey. Matta-Clark cut the building in half to alter our perception of the stable archetypal American home as an immutable object.

“The building was then supported on one side by jacks, and the foundations slightly lowered at an angle on the same side. By carefully, and slowly lowering the jacks, the one half of the house came to rest on the lowered foundations, the cut opening and revealing a wedge shape that bisected the house.”37 But the neighbourhood was split to begin with. It was constructed for people who serviced the larger homes in Englewood. As economy changed, the wealthy could no longer employ as many people to work in their homes. Therefore the homes slipped into disarray as it was a neighbourhood for low-income housing. In this way, the cuttings stand as metaphors for the layers of past references in the individual building, and for the disjuncture in the functioning of the individual within society. The split within the walls symbolized a split, a rupturing, of interpersonal and class boundaries. The building types were archetypal, each assuming a certain status about the inhabitants. The split isn’t only a metaphor, but gives us a different take on what a family home is. Homes are erected to protect. They can’t when the neighbourhood or economy changes. The house can’t protect the family from unemployment. The Split gave us a new context where we could examine the home with a new vocabulary. The vocabulary was the challenge; a personal one between you and the artist (Matta-Clark). Did you dare enter? Did you dare participate in the event? If you did meet the challenge, then what did you see? Did you understand why? “And because your senses were heightened by fear (walking through crevices several meters deep) you were far more receptive to the message.”38 This is in itself is an internal contradiction to our modern day understanding of his works. We can only experience them as archival documents. None of his works still stands today as he occupied these building mere months before they were due for demolition. The cuts open a discussion about voyeurism. Examining life and the neighbourhood far more closely, than ever expected. The documentation: cut up photograph that follows the cut through in a collage; subvert our idea of the home as an immutable object. The cuttings in these work sought to deconstruct this vision, in an effort to release the form of the house, which has come to symbolize containment and suburban alienation.

Gordon Matta- Clark: A Retrospective, exhib. cat., Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago 1985 p10 Crawford, Jane. October 10, 1997. “Jane Crawford Gordon Matta-Clark.” In SCI-Arc Media Archive. Southern California Institute of Architecture. <http://sma.sciarc.edu/vide o/jane-crawfordgordon-matta-klark/>. (accessed 24022013)

37 38

Gordon Matta-Clark: Collage following the cut through the building in ‘Splitting’

Robert Smithsons Map of broken glass

Thus, the dissent is in the method by which he conveys his message --the de-structuring of a crumbling edifice. It’s in the challenge that he implores you to go through that elucidates your understanding of his message. And, it’s in the final creation -- the unorthodox looking slant of an average home.

Entropy and Smithson’s logic Matta-Clark was consistent in the belief that the decay of the neighbourhood was the natural path of its existence. He believed it should be celebrated, because it is beautiful. At this point it is necessary to discuss entropy and its relation to Robert Smithson – a strand that derives elements of Matta-Clark’s ‘Anarchitecture’. Smithson was the preeminent ‘entropologist’. He inscribed all his work with a sense of irreversibility, demonstrated with his Map of Broken Clear Glass. And at the same time, he worked against that, to provide images and ideas which encapsulated a different sense of time. Matta-Clark’s work focused on a process which deals with the increase of entropy. His cuts stopped short of realizing the possible entropy contained within a building; the cuts explored and displayed the structure, “but did not allow the structure to pass beyond the point of irreversibility”39, a situation where there is an upset in structural grid, but the structure does not collapse. It is only pushed to the point where it becomes unnerving.

Comparing with Wigley’s formal description of deconstructive architecture, Matta-Clark’s building cut especially ‘Splitting’ should then be classified under the same notion of deconstructivist. The building is lowered on a jack, creating a slanted wall that gives an 39

Deconstruction omnibus volume (A.papakadis et al) p145

aesthetic of danger. The cut stopped short of realising the potential of entropy contained within a building. The cuts did not allow the building to pass beyond the point of irreversibility. Which is similar to his statement that “the flaws or contamination by the deconstructivist ‘alien’ do not lead to the collapse of the structure. It is pushed to the point where it becomes unsettling.”40

The same unsettling feeling you ought to experience when situated amongst the unusual light passages through the ordinary home is similar to the unsettling feeling created by the deconstructivist ‘alien’ - Matta-clark, in any other built deconstructed architectures. The 1960s and 70s cultural anxiety about the temporal drove artist and architects to ‘ironize’ about time and space. These cuts try to be a representation to expand the limits of what shock us most, an idea that can be found in the ruins and voids. As Tschumi’s deconstruction blur the lines between form and structure, Matta-Clark does so with the blurring of building and the neighbourhood, the ruin and the void (space). They both coalesce because they are products of one another. The way in which he chose to work was like a performance, and this theatrical mood extended to the viewer’s experience of the site. In the six years in which Matta-Clark cut buildings, he moved from simple, discrete, rectangular shapes to slices whose overlapping created further complexity.His architectural gestures had the potential to be statements against certain social conditions. His idea of ‘Anarchitecture’ called for an anarchic method to architecture, marked physically by a routine of de-structuring, rather than by the creation of structure. Furthermore, the revelation of the cuts, threaten the hidden logic of the representation of the home as a safeguard. It shows the relationship between, home, the inhabitant and the condition of the neighbourhood. The ever expanding archive and variable treasure trove of drawings, photographs, and writings conceive of and acted on abandoned buildings, which he explored to subvert the social environment.

The Derrida linked to Matta-Clarking Post structuralism In this light what is significant is the way that the principles of Matta-Clark’s ‘Anarchitecture’, fit the more general pattern of the order that Derrida identifies as a central feature of post structuralist deconstruction. ‘Post-structuralism’ is a label formed by American academics to signify the assorted works of a series of mid-20th-century French and continental philosophers and critical theorists of which Jacques Derrida is a part of. This label came to international prominence in the 1960s and ‘70s. A major premise of post structuralism is the instability of human sciences.

Wigley, Mark and Johnson, Phillip, Deconstructivist Architecture p19

“This is caused by the complexity of humans themselves and the impossibility of fully escaping structures in order to study them.”41 Post-structuralism is a response to structuralism. The intellectual movement developed in Europe from early 20th century that argue human culture may be understood by means of a specific structure—modelled on language (i.e., structural linguistics). It differs from concrete reality and from abstract ideas. Post-structuralist authors all present different critiques of structuralism. Common themes include the rejection of the self-sufficiency of the structures that structuralism conceives, and begins an interrogation of the ‘binary oppositions’ that constitute those structures. The oppositions that state one cannot understand ‘good’ without a consideration of what constitutes as ‘evil’. In the post-structuralist approach to literary analysis, the reader displaces the author as the primary subject of study. This displacement is often referred to as the “destabilizing” or “decentering” of the author. The post-structuralist examine other sources for meaning (e.g., readers, cultural norms, other literature, etc.), without a central fixation on the author. These alternative sources are never really authoritative, and promise no consistency. “Post-structuralism rejects the notion of the essential quality of the dominant relation in the hierarchy, choosing rather to expose these relations and the dependency of the dominant term on its apparently subservient counterpart. The only way to properly understand these meanings is to deconstruct the assumptions and knowledge systems that produce the illusion of singular meaning”42

If we look at the cuts according to post structuralist tenets of something possessing more than one meaning, by examining other sources for meaning, Matta-Clark’s art falls under this category. As it is art means that the writer/artist intended meaning is secondary, because Matta-Clark invites us to experience the cuts to formulate your take on his intensions. The potential of the deconstruction allows the creative user to enter the mind of the creator. Through Matta-Clarks cuts and archaeological excavations on floors, walls and other structures, the possibilities of deconstructing reality is somehow accomplished by transforming our consciousness and the way we perceive the normality of the everyday home. The architectural aim was more subtle than doing pieces that would demonstrate an alternative attitude to buildings. But it did give us a different attitude towards buildings. Matta-Clark’s ‘Anarchitectural’ concepts were on the complexity of forms which had seemingly outlasted their function for the disenfranchised inhabitants. Post-structuralism and ‘Anarchitecture’ share a social consciousness derived out of a philosophical need to conjure and criticize the concerns of history and time. Anarchitecture is a knowledge gained by incision and through addition by subtraction of architectural modifications in the passageways and views that exemplified in Bronx floors: threshold, (1972), and day’s end, (1975); to affect the immutable object.

Merquior, J.G. (1987). Foucault (Fontana Modern Masters series), University of California Press, Poster, Mark, Critical theory and post structuralism: in search of a context, section Introduction: Theory and the problem of Context, (1988) pp.5-6

41 42

Paper Architecture – Lebbeus Woods’ Practice

26 27 28 29

Centricity, 1987 Aerial Paris, 1989 Zagreb Free-Zone, 1990 Notations Exploring Lebbeus woods Practice (Opposite)

New Basis for Architecture

“Free Space”

Lebbeus Woods

Heterarchy

Radical Reconstructions

Woods carries on from Matta-Clarks notion of celebrating decaying edifices. He proposes radical reconstructions similar to Chernikov’s constructivist devices that respond to the urban malaise. The concepts attempt to reconfigure notions of efficiency autonomy and community43 Woods was a theorist, who devoted his career to creating radical new forms of space that are responsive to the uncertainty and continual shifts of contemporary society. What his work does is important to the architecture profession as it engages the interest of anyone who cares about the future of culture and society. “I am not only interested in an architecture that serves an existing idea of living, but more so in the prospect of the new ways of living”44

Woods seems to be asking anew a great old question of political and physic economies. “What is it that makes us love oppression so much? What can make us demand not only more but differently?”45 What is it, in other words, that limits our actions to remedy and restore rather than completely reconstruct? He guides us to adopt non-hierarchical thinking about the past in places like Sarajevo, or a labour intensive Havana, or the abandoned shipyards in San Francisco. This voice goes so much against the voice of reason that no clarification, let alone explanation, can be proposed- at least not in terms of what is commonly understood as “reasonable”. The method he pursues takes up two basic issues. The first is a disregard for division between knowing how and knowing that which is already done. The second is a derivation of the first. Why does he do what he does? Why does he make what he makes? Aside from all the psychological implication of Thom Mayne’s account of Woods’ activities that “his architecture stand as a stark contrast to the recalcitrance of our resent times [the dialogue with commodity, firmness and delight],”46 Woods is very much interested in exploring some kind of basis for Architecture. Other than what is normally sought – a historical basis- the Vitruvian triad. Woods sees contemporary architecture as very conservative. Because it requires vast sums of money and it carries a social responsibility; it seeks some kind of basis rooted deeply in society and culture for making Architecture. The impulse therefore, is to look for something more fundamental, an additional basis for Architecture. This fundamentality is an attempt to critique the world in order to look at it.

Woods, Lebbeus, Radical reconstruction (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1997) p156 Noever, Peter, Regina Haslinger, and Coop Himmelblau, Architecture in transition : between deconstruction and new modernism (Munich; New York: Prestel ; Distributed in the USA and Canada by te Neues Pub. Co., 1991)p24 45 Ibid p25 46 Woods, Lebbeus. September 16, 1991. “Lebbeus Woods.” In SCI-Arc Media Archive. Southern California Institute of Architecture. <http://sma.sciarc.edu/video/lebbeus-woods/>. (March 19, 2013) 43 44

A dialogue with Space In the realm of social sciences - a field architecture is intrinsically a part of, space is usually discussed in terms of the human presence within it. However, considering space purely within the subject of Architecture, it is the abstract qualities of the space that are significant. For an understandable reason, architect are specialists in forming these abstract qualities. One of the clichés derived from this approach is that space is designed to be functional, which means the prescription for architectural space, is that which has been shaped to follow a “programme” for human use.

If the programmed space is subsequently violated and this violation is tolerated, it may set a precedent, become more widespread- threaten the whole mechanism of society. However it is clear now that architects must look at ways to organise space that differ radically from classical ways that served the past. We now know these other ways, and they worked for a different, collective way of thinking and living, in different guises. If we were to adopt them, “a new kind of architecture and human community will evolve”47 Woods proclaims. Derrida is explicit, too, about certain aspect of space, which could be argued as crucial. “Space as interval, and as holding open the possibilities of an open future.”48 Within deconstruction, at least in its theory, space is explicitly defined in time relations. It is a critique of what is happening in the now, and does not go to history for its basis. Woods’s work has had a long and personal relationship to physics and cosmology, particularly in entropy of today. In this same light as Derrida, who looked to science because it no longer depended on a centre point for its investigations. Woods’ Centricity project of 1987 speculates about an interconnection of urban form and the concentric circles of the atom. What is striking about this work is the way in which the metaphors function reciprocally. In woods speculation, architecture becomes a device for investigating physics and vice versa. The Aerial Paris project of 1989 continues this inquiry. Here Woods challenges architecture’s most compelling physical constraint - gravity. Utilising magnetic field energy from the earth’s magnetosphere – one we know to be there but are currently incapable of tapping into. He develops a series of habitations that float and dance in the sky above the city, housing a mystical circus. “His work is not only ‘un-costructable’ because of the limits of our ambition, but of the limits our technology.”49 Parallel to the other guises explored in this study, Woods’ theory isn’t simply a set of formalistic or whimsical theory, but the human inhabitation of these speculative spaces is appreciated. This is a proposal for an unorthodox way of living because he sees the current one as decayingtied to a highly authoritarian hierarchy reality . In other words, much like the popular catch phrase of television psychologist Dr. Phil, “there is no reality, only perception”50. By having this awareness, can one fully begin to understand wood’s architecture from an objectionable vantage point of a single frame of reference.

ibid Massey, Doreen, For Space (London ; Thousand Oaks, Calif: SAGE, 2005) ‘Lebbeus Woods. Into the Woods - Architecture - Domus’, Domusweb.it <http://www.domusweb.it/ en/architecture/lebbeus-woods-into-the-woods/> [accessed 23 March 2013] 50 <http://robertocioffi.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/form-body-technique-space.pdf/>[accessed 12032012] 47 48 49

[In]Conclusion

The dissident object and how it is derived Upsetting Cartesian systems “I turned to architecture because it seemed to me that by the act of recreation I could achieve reconciliation”51 This is perhaps the most important thought that drives Woods to become part of the world. His ideas cannot merely represent it through critique or some kind of “mimetic activity” – his description of modern architecture. His speculative architecture seeks to invent the world. Not a world, not my world, but THE world. To consider architecture is to consider the process of creating, and not merely expressing knowledge. Because of this, the creating of architecture is a major coalescing activity in society. Orthogonal architectural forms are applications of a dominant system of reasoning that rejects any deviations as irrational in principle. In present society, Cartesian logic and its mathematical pattern, the orthogonal grid of x,y and z coordinates are common traits by which differences, contrasts and conflicts of every kind are reconciled. Cartesian logic suggest the existence of fundamental dualities that can never, by its own rules, be entirely rationalised, just as the orthogonal frame can never be completely stabilised. Thus it is with the man versus nature paradigm. From this follows the belief that it is rational to tame or defeat nature – including ‘human nature’ “Fear of the belief of Cartesian system of rationality is the reason that people stubbornly stay in earthquake zones, rebuilding after each earthquake in essentially the same fashion.” 52 All designed space is in fact true abstraction, according to Woods; “truer to the mathematical system than to any human ‘function” 53. Many architects talk of designing space for human needs, while human needs are actually being shaped to satisfy designed space. This echoes Tschumi’s argument of the principles of reciprosity and the ideal kitchen. As all the other principles -indifference and conflict work, its up to the creator to use the to invent an alternative kind of space for renewed human use. When Friedrich Nietzsche wrote that “man would sooner have the void for his purpose than be void of purpose”54; meaning man would rather have meaning in the void than a void in the meaning. He made an apt critique of the present, modern situation. For in fact space is a void, an emptiness which man has a powerful need to fill with his own presence. Woods’ introduction of the concept of “free-space” in the Berlin Free-Zone project in 1990 creates complex spatial forms. The free-space is unsuitable for the conventional, and demands instead the invention of new ways of occupying space, and even new types of activities. Free-space creates extreme conditions within which living and working are engaged with a contrasting range of appearance.

Woods, Lebbeus, Radical reconstruction (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1997) p156 ibid 53 ibid 54 Campbell, David, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Meaning, The Journal of Nietzsche Studies, 26 (2003), 25–5 51 52

His dissident object is the entropic free space that he develops on paper.as seen in Berlin Free-Zone

Where this ‘free-space’ dimension is designed for, the architecture is enriched. The users’ imagination captured. A new world is created. The intention with this study was to begin a discourse for the reason behind the dissident architectural object – Deconstructivist architecture and the link this has with various deconstructions of architecture ranging from the physical transformations of site to paper speculative architecture. It is questionable whether the richness of the manifestations of these guises is a direct result of post-structural literary critique, or whether it is an expression of the same ideas. Regardless, the understanding of the value and power of the application of these guises emphasises the potential to enrich architecture’s vocabulary.

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Websites BLDBLG, without walls: an interview with lebbeus woods<http://bldgblog. blogspot.co.uk/2007/10/without-walls-interview-with-lebbeus.html /> (accessed 03032013). Carnegie Museum of Art , Lebbeus Woods: Experimental Architecture http://www.absolutearts.com/artsnews/2004/08/02/32246.html/ (accessed 2211202). DPR-barcelona, Deconstructing Reality | Gordon Matta-Clark <http:// dprbcn.wordpress.com/2012/01/26/gordon-matta-clark/ /> (accessed 020213)

Image references

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4. Personally generated diagram

Ouroussoff, Nicolai, ‘Timely Lessons

6. http://transform-mag.com/ps/ 44

5. http://www.fotopedia.com/ albums/FQdmLHwM6WQ/entries/4EwmslTAMzA (230313)

Totally Generic. SCI-Arc Media Archive. Southern California Institute of Architecture. 06 Oct. 2010. <http://sma.sciarc. edu/video/bernard-tschumi-totally-generic/>. (accessed 24032013)

folies-%E2%80%93-parc-de-la-villette-paris#id=2409 (230313) 7. http://transform-mag.com/ps/folies-%E2%80%93-parc-de-la-villetteparis#id=2409(accessed (230313) 8. http://transform-mag.com/ps/folies-%E2%80%93-parc-de-la-villetteparis#id=2409 (accessed 230313)

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9. Personally generated diagram 10. Tschumi, Bernard. Bernard Tschumi Totally Generic. SCI-Arc Media Archive. Southern California Institute of Architecture. 06 Oct. 2010. <http://sma.sciarc.edu/video/ bernard-tschumi-totally-generic/>. (accessed 24032013)

23. Personally generated diagram 24.http://www.metmuseum.org/ toah/works-of-art/1992.5067 (accessed 180313) 25. DPR-barcelona, Deconstructing Reality | Gordon Matta-Clark <http://dprbcn.wordpress. com/2012/01/26/gordon-matta-clark/ /> (accessed 020213)

11. http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=ecowq77Y3C0 (110213) 12. Tschumi, Bernard. Bernard Tschumi Totally Generic. SCI-Arc Media Archive. Southern California Institute of Architecture. 06 Oct. 2010. <http://sma.sciarc.edu/video/ bernard-tschumi-totally-generic/>. (accessed 24032013)

26-28. Woods, Lebbeus, Anarchitecture: Architecture Is a Political Act, Architectural Monographs, no. 22 (London : New York: Academy Editions ; St. Martin’s Press, 1992)

13. Tschumi, Bernard. Bernard Tschumi Totally Generic. SCI-Arc Media Archive. Southern California Institute of Architecture. 06 Oct. 2010. <http://sma.sciarc.edu/video/ bernard-tschumi-totally-generic/>. (accessed 24032013)

29. Personally generated diagram 30. Woods, Lebbeus, Anarchitecture: Architecture Is a Political Act, Architectural Monographs, no. 22 (London : New York: Academy Editions ; St. Martin’s Press, 1992)

14. Papadakes, A, Catherine Cooke, and Andrew E Benjamin, Deconstruction : omnibus volume (New York: Rizzoli, 1989) 15. Papadakes, A, Catherine Cooke, and Andrew E Benjamin, Deconstruction : omnibus volume (New York: Rizzoli, 1989) 16. Tschumi, Bernard. Bernard Tschumi 45