Narrative Architecture: A Kynical Manifesto by nai010

. . NARRATIVE ARCHITECTURE . . . . . A KYNICAL MANIFESTO . . .

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. . . . . . . . CRUZ GARCIA & NATHALIE FRANKOWSKI . . . .

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TABLE OF CONTENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A SORT OF INTRODUCTION TO THIS KYNICAL MANIFESTO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 ..................................................................... ..................................................... . . PART I: IDEOLOGY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Modernism . . . . . . . . Plans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Media . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Icon(oclast) . . PART II: CYNICISM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . AprÃ¨s-garde . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1956 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Lessons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. PART III: KYNICISM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Narrative . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Unmaskings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Postscript . . APPENDIX: KYNICAL CONCLUSIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Beautiful Ceremony . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Post-Colonial Prose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . NOTES IMAGES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129 ..................................................................... ......................... . . ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130 ..................................................................... ......................... . . CREDITS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132 ..................................................................... .................................

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. . A SORT OF . . . INTRODUCTION TO . . .

. . . . . . THIS KYNICAL MANIFESTO . . . . . 13

. . . . As you see, there isn’t a single building here, not a single comfor tably designed corner, only destruction, anarchy. This made philistines laugh, as if it were the extra vagant idea of some insane individuals, but in fact it turned out to be ‘a devilish intuition’ which is realized in the stormy today. . Vladimir Mayakovsky, A Drop of Tar, 1915

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A SORT OF INTRODUCTION TO THIS KYNICAL MANIFESTO

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INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION IMAGE 1/4

Ideology critique stripped of humour is just Ideology resurrected in an alternative form. Without the capacity to laugh about Architecture’s absurd claims—to make the world a better place without challenging social, economic, or political powers, to be critical without questioning the status quo, to create spaces for ‘the people’ while people cannot participate in the process to think and make architecture, to argue for a sustainable architecture while building more, to plan ‘smart’ cities that are ‘condemned to be stupid’, to pursue ecological architecture while destroying the ecosystems at an unprecedented rate—Architecture remains stuck in its ideological impasse. This book reconstructs in three parts (Ideology, Cynicism, Kynicism) the main events that led to the formulation of Kynical Architecture; Architecture that bites the Masks of Ideology away (like the Diogenesean Dog) and laughs at the sight of the unveiled allegorical face of a deadly serious (and at times immovable) discipline. As a cautionary tale (and before dealing with the three main parts of the book), these very short stories render through three archetypes—Courtyard, Wall, and Lantern—the latent threat of Architecture failing to: laugh about itself, reveal hegemonic powers, subvert the lies hiding behind the beautifully rendered alternative scenarios.

Manifestoes are as much about ambition, dreams, and aspirations, as they are about omissions, oppositions and eradications. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A Manifesto is like a love letter to something that doesn’t quite yet exist. Its utopian scope is dialectical in ambition. On the one hand, it outlines pure desires; it aims for a goal without accounting for probabilities, percentages, statistics. On the other, it highlights the source of discomfort, the attraction to destruction, the will to challenge the status quo. After surviving the age of a generation disgusted with them, the manifesto has made it all the way back to the subconscious of Architecture. In order to achieve meaningful change, Architecture craves manifestoes.

A SORT OF INTRODUCTION TO THIS KYNICAL MANIFESTO

Manifestoes are compelling not just because of the burning fervour of their aims, but because of the scorching challenges their idealistic struggles presuppose. The history of manifestoes is not only filled with daring declarations of intent and bold statements of unyielding determination; but with furious neglect, strategic resistance and staunch antagonism. . After all, Mayakovski fuelled his radical prose with his desire to throw the old masters ‘Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, etc. etc. overboard from the ship of modernity’. David Burliuk, Alexander Kruchenykh, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Victor Khlebnikov, ‘A Slap in the Face of Public Taste’ (1917). Malevich

promised to free art (and architecture) from the ballast of objectivity through the Black Square—a Suprematist tabula rasa. Loos aimed to abolish ornament from objects of daily use to embrace a new form of cultural evolution. And Complexity and Contradiction called for the difficult whole in opposition to Purist, monolithic, Modernist Aesthetics. . To be a Kynic is to live and practice a Manifesto—of resistance, ridicule, anger, and laughter. To be a Kynic is to oppose ideological submission, to neglect its power, and to subvert its influence. To be a Kynical architect is to question the status quo, to challenge institutions, academic, and professional organizations. To be a Kynic today implies to deconstruct and retell history, to imagine the possibility of another history. To be a Kynic requires to invent, alter, and propose alternative Narratives. To be a Kynic is to follow up the Critique of Pure, Dialectical and Cynical Reason, with a Critique of Black, Queer, Non-ableist and Intersectional Reason. To be a Kynic today is to question the (always biased) images of the future we’ve been force-fed through generations. To be a Kynic is to imagine futures that may not include us.

Against decades of misreading and misconceptions, this manifesto forces the continuation of the ‘miscarried dialogue’ about the Utopian pursuit of architecture against the fallacious foundations of its ‘post-modernist’ discreditors, rethinks architectural strategies of presentation as conceptual projects rather than as mere mediums, reconsiders the re-construction of history as a storytelling device against the false pretension of established, archeological truths, and outlines the pitfall of dogmatic seriousness, rejecting the paralyzing symptoms of a condition neutralizing the power of architecture as a tool for ideological critique. . This book proposes the creation of Kynical Architecture (an Architecture of narrative provocations, and practice as subversion), through the negation of the usual means of architectural intelligence, calls to re-create the Pool the fleeting avant-garde constructed to swim upstream against the ideological current, allures to piss like Diogenes against the ideological wind. . . THIS IS NOT A BOOK ABOUT BUILDINGS . While Pure Hardcore Icons is a manifesto about buildings and form, this book is about form without buildings. This is a book about Architecture in its Narrative form. . Against the naïve intention of solving all of the world’s problems with buildings, and casting tons of poured concrete and welded steel as the ultimate solutions, this manifesto proposes architectural strate-

NARRATIVE ARCHITECTURE

Against the naïve intention of solving all of the world’s problems with buildings, and casting tons of poured concrete and welded steel as the ultimate solutions, this manifesto proposes architectural strategies of presentation not as mediums but as ‘ends’ in themselves. . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . PART I . .

. . . IDEOLOGY . . . . . 29

. . . . For a man’s possi- bilities, plans, and feelings must first be hedged in by prejudices, traditions, obstacles, and barriers of all sorts, like a lunatic in his straightjacket, and only then can whatever he is capable of doing have perhaps some value, substance, and staying power. . Robert Musil, The Man Without Qualities

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PART I—IDEOLOGY

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The time has come for great architecture. And there can be no new architecture without a new urba nism—that is, new principles of planning

cities. New cities have always in the course of time replaced old ones. Today, at last, a new type of city can be born, the city of our modern times, filled with happiness, radiant with the essential joys. Academic architecture has had its day. Architecture has a new purpose which is the rearrangement and coordination of all the developments of today. Let us talk no more of style, whether modern or traditional. Style is the thing itselfâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;to paraphrase a famous French saying: architectural style is no more than the society NARRATIVE ARCHITECTURE

of the machine age as manifested in its thought, its methods of production, its general equipment, and hence in its dwellings and cities. . Le Corbusier, La Ville Radieuse (The City Radiant with Joy), Radio Speech

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AVIARY

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Encased by mesh and titanium rods, the Aviary, with its clear geometric shapes stands in the virgin landscape. The structure focuses on the study and research of alternative forms of Ornithological interrogation. The Aviary is in reality a Detention Centre for Tropical Birds, a Guantanamo for colourful parrots. A lightweight structure assembled following simple geometric and constructive principles, the first Aviary was erected during the great Purge—a massive expropriation of the island in order to regain complete control over its most ‘valuable’ resources. Unsuspecting, the public thought of it as another zoologist project, one of many in those days of political austerity and land acquisitions by the Federal Government and the Fiscal Control Board. Birds thought to possess valuable information were detained, interrogated, and studied in the Aviary. Birds were taken from cages and trees. Snatched in mid-flight by Floating Fortresses, captured in the forests by the Amphibian structures. The Javelin’s highly sensitive sensors could detect birds flying thousands of kilometres away. The Amphibian Fortress could feel the noise of a beak chewing on insects. In less than a year no birds remained free. More Aviaries were spotted on the newly claimed landscape. At one time focused on dolphins and rats, military training was now directed towards birds. Tropical Birds were the new POW. Those willing were converted into allied spies. All birds sang. Some birds sang louder than the others.

CAMP

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The Camps are the only evidence of the island’s previous inhabitation. Like nuclear no-go zones, they are fenced areas encircling monuments, obelisks, effigies, and icons of the life that used to occupy the island. In the years of the great purge, all forms of ‘historically significant architecture’ (a concept used by members of Tropicalia to identify any form of artefact, from statues of political figures to pieces of buildings, and infrastructures that carry a form of idealism) were concentrated in these Camps. As the Camps were quickly filled, more of them were built. Always respecting ecologically sensible zones, the Camps were constructed in areas of transition. Between the palm trees and the beach. Between the mountains and the sea. The Camps are Tropical Museums: Prisons for Ideology, internment camps for Architecture.

CREDITS . . . Texts

Cruz Garcia & Nathalie Frankowski, WAI Architecture Think Tank

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Images Cruz Garcia & Nathalie Frankowski, WAI Architecture Think Tank

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Assistant Editor Ronald Frankowski

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Copy Editing Leo Reijnen (Taal & Teken)

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Design Team Thursday

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Lithography and Printing Wilco Art Books

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Paper Invercote Metalprint, Biotop

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Fonts Whyte Inktrap, Burgess

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Production Milou van Lieshout, nai010 publishers

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Publisher Marcel Witvoet, nai010 publishers

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This publication was made possible by financial support from The Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, the Institute of Optimistic Architectures, Michelle Garnaut, and Jan Sobotka.

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© 2019 nai010 publishers, Rotterdam. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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Although every effort was made to find the copyright holders for the illustrations used, it has not been possible to trace them all. Interested parties are requested to contact nai010 publishers, Korte Hoogstraat 31, 3011 GK Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

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nai010 publishers is an inter nationally orientated publisher specialized in developing, producing and distributing books in the fields of architecture, urbanism, art and design. www.nai010.com

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Printed and bound in the Netherlands

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ISBN 978-94-6208-524-4 NUR 648 BISAC ARC000000, ARC00100

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Narrative Architecture - A Kynical Manifesto is also available as: Narrative Architecture - A Kynical Manifesto e-book (PDF) e-ISBN 978-94-6208-562-6

Narrative Architecture reveals a stream of remarkable architectural and urban visions in the twentieth century that culminated in the construction of one of the most powerful, misunderstood and underutilized weapons of architectural and urban critique, thinking and representation. . This historical genealogy in three parts weaves insepaÂrable modern architecture and narrative critique through never before seen images of half a century of utopian, heroic, commercial, ironic and critical projects by Le Corbusier, Team 10, Constant, Victor Gruen, Yona Friedman, Archizoom, Superstudio and Rem Koolhaas. . Alluding to Diogenes, the ancient kynic who wandered with a lantern in search of an honest man, through narrative, archival and provocative images and texts, the book lays the groundwork in search of an honest architecture able to question the pressing challenges of our times. . Cruz Garcia and Nathalie Frankowski are architects, educators, codirectors of international studio WAI Architecture Think Tank.

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nai010 publishers www.nai010.com

9 978-94-6208-5244 789462 085244

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