Razvan Ghilic-Micu - Chinese Democracy by Razvan Ghilic-Micu

CHINESE

DEMOCRACY

RAZVAN GHILIC-MICU

CHINESE

DEMOCRACY A PLAY ON WORDS

IN 2 ACTS BY RAZVAN GHILIC-MICU

OVERTURE

November 2008 marked the release of the sixth Guns N Roses studio album, a production peculiarly entitled “Chinese Democracy”, only a few months after the summer Olympic Games and of course, the finalization of the long awaited Headquarters for the China Central Television designed by the Office for Metropolitan Architecture.

Yet again, the ever redoubtable Rem Koolhaas managed to lead his office onto a new continent, securing a high profile commission, being once more a perfectly tuned surfer riding an affluent wave. Nothing in the work of OMA under Rem’s attentive lead seems to be left to chance, or even merely weakened around the joints of the argument by swift decisions, subjective stylistic trademarks or contextual excuses. In many ways we can regard the entire body of work OMA has produced - both as a design firm, as well as in conjunction with their own AMO’s thinktank counterpart - as a tight-fit between a ruthlessly raw intellectual approach and a visionary critical practice. The direct and seemingly natural correspondence between the research and the outcome seems to emerge so objectively that one – especially one equipped with the fully justifiable cynicism of a young architect of the 21st century – cannot help but scrutinize with a certain degree of suspicion. It is almost as if objectiveness and open-mindedness are by themselves OMA’s stylistic trademark, to the point where the didactic process implanted three decades ago, perfected and buoyantly disseminated to the date by Rem’s office, its satellite out-growths and the general discipline has become unduly reproducible by any design rookie. Can thus the very beacon of non-clichéd approach become a cliché?

Rem Koolhaas, besides being an uncontested intellectual figure perched over the last 35 years of architectural theory and practice way out of the reach of mundane criticism, is also a shrewd practitioner, able to follow a thorough and unwearied design methodology with an intimidating consistency. To paraphrase Alejandro Zaera Polo, certain degrees of complexity are achieved not through the Venturian contradiction, but through consistency. This premise emerged strongly and constantly especially after the mid 1990’s, when “the discourse on ‘the generic’ resurfaced, propelled primarily by the theoretical projects of Rem Koolhaas coupled with his works on generic space and the architectural effects of globalization.” (Zaera Polo, 2010) Dissecting OMA’s adventures in East-Asia is a worthwhile didactic exercise, especially since they not only exhibit all the symptoms of the methodology Rem has been institutionalizing from the beginning of his architectural career, but also contain a few fascinating theoretical arcs, central to the aforementioned beginning.

ACT I_METHODOLOGY 01

scene 001 Re-learning from Las Vegas

History is boring and irrelevant precisely because we’re used to a chronological exposition of facts, meant to fit together due to the very linearity embedded in the string of consciousness put forth. I challenge anyone, especially a creative / critical thinker to keep track of his/her thoughts, influences, manifestations and personal neuroses and observe how often ideological filaments reach out to create parallel circuits identical to neural synapses to self-similar strings of information, always iterating through our personal and collective anthologies in order to find grounds for development. We are simply incapable of being linear, mostly owing to the string of discrepancies between the information we receive, the information we are contextually expected to output, and our own abilities of processing and producing information. Ideas, influences and creativity are expected to be iterative, to loop, re-assess, post-rationalize and discover latent potentials, or inform one’s trajectory at unpredictable intervals. Without indenting to postpone the set-up for the chapter through a needlessly verbose preamble to Rem’s personal influences and their re-introduction into the larger rhetoric, I wish to bring forth the issue of the manifesto as the starting point of the architectural journey. More specific, the work of Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, justly appreciated by Hans Ulrich Olbrist as maybe the last manifesto on architecture: “Rem was noticing that since then, most manifestoes were about the city”. (Koolhaas, Content, 2004) The interview sustained by Rem Koolhaas and Hans Ulrich Olbrist with the authors of the “Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture” reveals the concern with the re-evaluation of the discourse in relation with the evolution of the context

that initially generated the ideas composing the particular rhetoric to be dissected. The discussion reveals a few points surprisingly germane in short retrospect to the theoretical work laid out in the “Harvard Project on the City – The Great Leap Forward” volume as well as in anticipation of the seminal physical project to be materialized in Beijing, namely the China Central Television Headquarters. Accepting the fact that Complexity and Contradiction could be the last manifesto in 30 years, followed by a swarm of “books about cities that imply manifestoes – [...] but nothing about architecture anymore” (Koolhaas, Content, 2004), Koolhaas positions himself in a category of architectural criticism more interested in creating a logical discourse developing a set of theoretical operations around a pre-existing condition as opposed to proposing an ideological agenda of the magnitude Venturi and Scott Brown achieved in their early publications. A very interesting question mark is placed on the “shift from form to iconography [...] and the enormous popular appeal of form-making, of architects who are putting entire cities on the map by doing sculpture” (Koolhaas, Content, 2004). There are two interesting streams of thought stemming out of the conversation: on one hand the concern with the way architectural theory could be much more focused on creating a background web of intellectual considerations behind contextual approach, and on the other hand an incessant obsession with the architectural resolution, with concerns such as “signs are more important than substance”, or the critical evaluation of the role the architect is playing through the very form-making final impact on the project and the site. Through the return to the seminal source that inspired Rem Koolhaas’ career beginnings – Venturi and Scott Brown – as well as the issues raised as a genuine act of re-assessing the process, Koolhaas seems to work at a meta-architectural level, trying to keep theoretical methods away from their assimilation into societal values; hence the extreme resemblance between his approach and the resistance to the “theoretical blockade” much argued against

in Oppositions 1 by Diana Agrest and Mario Gandelsonas. (Agrest & Gandelsonas, 1973)

After over 20 years of activity, OMA cannot possibly be subjected to scrutiny regarding their ability of constructing an airtight argument, or materializing such argument into a building. There is very little at stake regarding the validation of their seminal practice by the purely disciplinary coordinates of professional architecture.

scene 002 The Harvard Project on the City

There is much weight however resting on the ability of any intellectual organization to not only penetrate, but also successfully assert itself on a market governed by dissimilar values, with completely different background and socio-political trajectory than most contexts previously engaged. At a macro-temporal scale, I would like to draw a parallel between the experience the Yale studio “learning” from Las Vegas in the 1960’s had when confronted with the physical and disciplinary inability of representing the context, and the experience a Western design firm would have had ten years ago engaging a cultural milieu without possessing the appropriate theoretical tools of establishing a dialogue. Rem Koolhaas, while teaching at the GSD, made the first theoretical step towards engaging an unexplored context, by producing yet another “book about a city”, this time focusing on the Pearl River Delta. The overarching argument and title of the publication: “The Great Leap Forward” is an exhaustive attempt at breeding two completely different species: the long-awaited “architectural manifesto” and the “encyclopaedia”. Unfortunately, the publication, falls short of being either of the two. (Koolhaas, Great Leap Forward, 2001) One interesting stylistic move, embraced later in the work outputted by AMO is the e-mimicry and e-collage.

There are multiple layers of reading and using the book as a source of information. The “main terms” are already commoditised for the user, outlined and even copyrighted – in the tradition of the fake patents series – as a short circuit route to the pit of the argument. In certain ways, such approach does elude the internet “shortcut” or “link”, a culture very much in fashion at the time the GSD studios were operating. Once again, Koolhaas proves to be a feisty culture devourer, shifting from the cinematic sequence of his “Junkspace” essay informed by his film-making background, to the “blitz” articles and visual noise “text-bites” perceptibly inspired by the cutting edge internet media of the late 90’s. Further explored in the 2nd book of the “Project on the city” as well as by the book and exhibition “Content”, this technique has become yet another “completely original OMA cliché”.

The encyclopaedic aspect of the analysis comes from the comprehensive collection of images, diagrams, facts, timelines and text informing the arguments. Unfortunately, the book is a large appendix for a much too synthesized and scattered field of arguments – the “grand work” is an inflated footnote. Given the lack of direct contact with the territory to be explored, the Project on the City is a pure database of “facts” with conclusions drawn solely on the information accumulated, and without a direct implication on a consequent theoretical position. Therefore, the Project on the City is lacking precisely the “project” part, the manifesto, the position, being – as Rem pointed out in the dialogue with Venturi and Scott Brown – another “book on the city”. (Koolhaas, Content, 2004) If ever a trip, this architectural trip is as exciting and revealing as taking pictures from a double decker during a standard sightseeing tour.

scene 003 GO EAST

003.01 _ “Neue Nationalgalerie” chapter.

In 2004, OMA and AMO published the book “Content”, after holding an exhibition with the same name at the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin. The spatial manifestation of their publication mischievously sub-entitled “Go East”, hosted by the glorious classical modern Gallery space designed by Mies van der Rohe for the city of Berlin, “sets an example of how architecture exhibitions can be communicative and inspiring for both the architects and the world we live in”. (Van Toorn, 2004) “This exhibition is not for ‘architects only’. The low walls bearing information allow a glimpse of people wandering through the space as Berlin is being rebuilt in the background. The models – raised on pedestals or floating above the walls – become part of the Berlin Skyline: the city, the world, to which the architect must relate. The entire exhibition is informal; the world the Koolhaas show creates is the opposite of Mies’s religious crypt in the basement.” (Van Toorn, 2004) One of the main attractions of the gallery, according to Van Toorn, was the “patent-wall”, a display proudly holding evidence of OMA’s intellectual fertility, as well as inscribing their work at the forefront of critical practice. It is evident that by doing so, Koolhaas humorously acknowledges the fact that architectural cultural capital is an openended web of copying and stealing, and the fake patents only serve to freeze an intellectual snapshot of a particular procedure.

NEUE NATIONALGALERIE EXHIBITION

This is where the cliché intervenes: in order to formalize and crystallize a patentable idea, one must resort to “diagram”; and in the OMA-Great Leap Forward-AMOContent-CCTV genealogical tree, the diagram is completely divorced from the content which inspired it, and the context onto which it will be grafted. The CCTV building – like any of the other formal re-thinking of prototypes proposed by OMA around the late 1990’s/early 2000’s – is a fortuitous confluence of contextual requirement, programmatic agenda and opportunity for a full scale testing ground. It is an icon, a scaled-up diagram, no matter how long of an intellectual heritage has being crocheted through extensive writings and exhibitions. In the end, the object is as self-standing three-dimensional embodiment of a patentable diagram as the model exhibited in the Neue Nationalgalerie, hung from a steel W section. The CCTV was there already, China was just a good excuse for it.

PATENT WALL

003.02 _ “in a bookstore near you” chapter.

Content – the book – is practically the Harvard Project on the City after leaving high brow academia and entering the pop culture scene. The dissemination of information becomes infused with satire; the argument is filtered through a map of visual and cultural noise, as if navigating a site with multiple pop-up windows – to draw another parallel to the e-culture. The diagram / icon becomes the main vehicle for communication. “OMA is one of the practices that has employed more deliberately and consistently architecture parlante” (Zaera-Polo, 2011) For Alejandro Zaera-Polo, the aforementioned complexity through consistency reached by the work of OMA in conjunction with embracing the global context does generate a condition in which it is hard to develop a specific “langue”/ codex, given the multi-agent context to be engaged. The way the diagram is being presented and understood is as “a technique / device / tool that escapes the paradigm of representation, the paradigm of semiotics [...] a gradation between the representational diagram and the techno-scientific paradigm that is the way in which DeLanda and Deleuze talk about the diagram.” (Zaera-Polo, 2011) Deleuze and Guattari establish a different type of reading of content and expression, where the first is not necessarily a signified, and the later the signifier, but together play variable parts in a common assemblage. (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987) In this mindset, Pierce’s notion of diagram becomes a productive agent for semiotics.

Judging by the visual extremely abbreviated - almost e-moticon like - iconicity comprised in the Content publication, Pierce’s semiotic triadic relation is challenged by the lack of boundary definitions between icon, index and symbol both in the cultural research and architectural trip portion of the CCTV project and in the final resolution – the built artefact. It can be inferred that OMA’s culture of reduction, diagram and patent / copyright makes the translation from idea to built form and diagram to create a much more direct transfer procedure. Symbol – an overly vilified and over-exposed propaganda technique intrinsic to the Chinese society – as shown in the “Great Leap Forward”, becomes a Venturian decoration behind which the shed is being expressed, a brand, a logo, something as potent and gaudy as the omnipresent shape shifting Hello Kitty brand.

INTERMEZZO | DISCUSSIONS

scene 001 Chinese Democracy The Special Economic Zones, as defined in “The Great Leap Foraward” are indeed remarkable testing grounds for exceptional urban conditions of “exacerbated differences”. (Koolhaas, Great Leap Forward, 2001) The “cloud of unknowing” surrounding these areas, as well as their professed ‘ad-hoc’ planning routines, always guiding urban construction mainly according to short term targets and repeatedly re-adjusting the long term targets seems to create an urban milieu impossible to capture in time and space with the precision intrinsic to the analytical and deliberately objective OMA modus operandi. The Chinese “democracy” manifestation – leaving aside the pop-reference pun of the overture – can be identified precisely with the morpho-social irrationality planned according to a logic that finds “beauty in disorder and virtue in bizarre”. The large scale linearity of most urban developments, as well as the repeated attempts of creating nodal zones – such as the Beijing Central Business District – is deceiving, the layouts adopted being purposely crude, almost like a puzzle with many pieces to be filled off the cuff. The indeterminate plans are meant to facilitate the opportunism of the social market economy. These urban-scapes of montage are composed of blocks – danwei – each exhibiting a thematic behaviour. The official reason is their “center of commercial activities” function; the realistic effect is systematic alienation. China has a long standing tradition in iconography / slogan. Most reforms have happened under the umbrella of a larger-than-life credo. Not entirely unfamiliar are entire billboards with words of wisdom meant to act as public motivators from the population, conceived and passed down by the leaders.

The Chinese nation is great: both in numbers and unity; and how would such a large population be regimented orderly under various doctrines better than through slogans. The slogan becomes identity; it becomes the ultimate Pierce triadic nightmare: icons, symbols and indexes are collapsed randomly into one entity, one belief to follow.

I would like to present a few considerations that focus on the relationship that OMA’s main tools – both discursive and formal – might have with democracy, be it in its Chinese metaphoric condition. Peter Sloterdijk claims that “democracy is based on the proto-architectonic ability to build waiting rooms, not to mention the proto-political ability to disarm citizens”. (Sloterdijk, 2005) His argument is looking at a larger scale of systematic organization than the Kantian model, according to which democracy is inherently the by-product of citizens exerting their power of judgment, claiming that the true power resides in the ability of waiting, and letting others wait. This suspiciously tactical game of non-action resembles in many ways the SEZ urban condition over a decade ago, with entire city swaths left indefinitely to ripe at the right time. He proceeds to use the simple analogy of the greenhouse, a typology meant specifically to allow hosting uprooted organisms from dissimilar climates along with the transposition of their original climatic conditions. The paradigm of the green house - in its most fundamental constructed artificiality - is equated to the urban basic condition of bringing “numerous strangers together to coexist behind shared walls [...] – a greenhouse for people who agreed to be uprooted from the modus vivendi of living in separation and instead be planted in the disarming modus vivendi of living together.” (Sloterdijk, 2005) Such ideas are relevant to the “Go East” project in two ways: firstly, the numerous social shifts outlined in “The Great Leap Forward”, reversing entire social hierarchies and structures depending on the accepted doctrines, leading to a heterogeneous urban conditions, and secondly the very discourse Rem Koolhaas patents in his “Loop” strategy for the CCTV: “ All media companies suffer from the subsequent paranoia: each sector talks about the others as “them”, distrust is rife, motives questioned.

There is no whole. [...] There is a conceptual space that could accommodate the construction of CCTV as a whole – a single entity in which all parts are housed permanently – aware of each others’ presence. A collective.” (Koolhaas, Content, 2004) Koolhaas’ intentions, although undoubtedly laudable and noble, do align with Sloterdijk’s observation that “the public sphere is not just the effect of people assembling, but in fact goes back to the construction of a space to contain them and in which the assembled persons are first able to assemble.” (Sloterdijk, 2005)

22 scene 002 Semiotics Considering the premise and factuality of the assemblage already in place, ideology / slogan / belief, as mentioned before are a strong social and political agent behind change in China. Consequently, the discussion Toyo Ito frames in Content about the power of architecture as a symbol is a germane concern relative to the double-agent role semiotics can play within such a representational system of beliefs: “What I envy in China is, while neither the client nor society has any clear idea of what to symbolise, still there’s a strong expectation of architects as creators of symbols. Which is why they’re calling in Rem and other architects from overseas to build something, whatever.[...] So why symbols? Well, I suppose it’s the desire to express some kind of “strength”. And then there’s that underlying connection between communism and mass symbols.” (Ito, 2004)

This set of concerns is by no means a new discussion taking place in the architectural discourse arena. In 1973, Koolhaas’ colleagues at the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies, Diana Agrest and Mario Gandelsonas dealt with the very issues of semiotics and architecture in their article published in Oppositions 1. Almost 30 years prior to the CCTV project, before any western architect ever dreamt of intervening in a milieu as complex and contradictory as China, they were asserting that “architecture has been modified to respond to changing social demands; architecture thereby becoming assimilated to society through theoretical operations. [...] At this juncture, one is concerned with theory in a strict sense, as opposed to the adaptive “theory”, which we call ideology.” (Agrest & Gandelsonas, 1973)

The proposal was calling for an architectural theory placed outside ideology, and the main vehicle to deliver such work was through semiotics, used for the specific production of knowledge within a general semiotic theory. The main difference in the theoretical procedure rests in the duality communication and significance. While communication is related to function and use of a system, and is concerned with “use and effects”, signification indicates the internal relation within a system and is concerned with the “nature of signs and the rules governing them”. (Agrest & Gandelsonas, 1973) Both concerns can be applied in the analysis of the CCTV building as an outcome of a diagrammatic, iconic, sign-based process; on one hand the building has to respond externally to a social, political and urban context documented in “The Great Leap Forward”, on the other hand, the building has to operate at the organizational scale of the discursive rhetoric brought forth by Koolhaas in Content.

ACT II_METHODOLOGY 02

scene 001 The promised land. Bravado “ Early 2002 – We received two invitations, one to apply to consider what should happen at Ground Zero, the other for the headquarters of China Central Television in Beijing. We discussed the choice over a Chinese meal. The life of the architect is so fraught with uncertainty and dilemmas that any clarification of the future, including astrology is disproportionately welcome. My fortune cookie read, “Stunningly Omnipresent Masters make minced meat of memory. We chose China.” (Koolhaas, Content, 2004)

“The first moment I knew about it, I knew it was going to be for us, so I personally listened to the instinct that it was going to happen. Beijing is a historical city, so what I was looking at in this book is simply the contemporary production of cities in China. We assured them that our intentions were good, that we were not simply foreigners who came into a country and ignore the values of the country, the oppositions, or the intelligent architects who didn’t like what we were doing. We were serious, listening and appreciating the dialogue.” (cctvupload, 2009) Rem Koolhaas and OMA finally arrive to China. The discourse offered both during the competition as well as after, either through his articles in Content, or various lectures and specials available online positions Koolhaas in the role of “the challenger”. It is indeed the most suitable attitude for a firm whose architectural goal is to extract the architect from the typical anxieties of the profession and open-mindedly assess the opportunities presented by each project. Indeed, the re-assessment of the profession’s response to the question of dense urban office environment – the generic tall vertical – is not long awaited for.

OPPOSITIONS

By interconnecting activities, Koolhaas is de facto achieving the programmatic friction theoretically argued against in his reading of both the Chinese society, and of the CCTV as an organization: “There is no whole” (Koolhaas, Content, 2004) The proposal features two L shaped towers, connected at the top. I find this infinitely interesting: OMA’s ability to not only produce a series of programmatic / formal procedures on paper, as a way of breaking down the design process and intervening objectively at any discrete point along, but also describe the built proposal through completely digestible elements, whose clarity of connection and assemblage leave very little room for questioning. Referring to Koolhaas’ own words in the CCTV video special, the “good intentions” are not only implicitly assumed, but also explicitly showcased.

PATENT SAMPLE

scene 002 Semiotics and iconicity For this scene I would like to bring together multiple threads of analysis – the characters of the play – that have been presented one by one, and allow them to inform each other in the reading of the built project. To me, several matters of concern are: iconicity, diagram - in both the Piercian and Deleuzian sense – manifesto, semiotics, complexity, logic, slogan and last but not least, Hellokittyzation.

28 =

2004)

“A new icon is formed...” (Koolhaas, Content,

Analyzing CCTV from a formal perspective is indeed an extremely arduous task. Rem Koolhaas, through his contradictory statements is offering the grounds for reacting with an extremely critical opinion, as well as a fullheartedly laudatory one. His statement in the conversation with Venturi and Scott Brown “ how do you account for the enormous popular appeal of form-making, of architects who are putting entire cities on the map by doing sculpture?” coupled with his very description of CCTV as an “icon” later in the same publication (Koolhaas, Content, 2004), does nothing but puzzle as to the real intentions and impact of the work.

O.M.A

VS.

HELLO KITTY

CHINA’S CCTV

I do not wish to discard the possibility of Koolhaas playing devil’s advocate with his own work. Like a sagacious surfer, he doesn’t exclude the possibility of portraying an eventual fall as part of the initial stunt. CCTV can be seen as a mere icon, an outline, a model hanging from the ceiling of the Neue Nationalgalerie, a Hello Kitty apparel item, but at the same time the process behind it is without fail a logically knitted web of reasons and seemingly objective decisions that lead to a profound building. Furthermore, the rhetoric seems to shift based on the audience. Koolhaas is ultimately not only a born performer, but also a shrewd one; he does not make himself guilty of elitist ideals and ultimately, “theoretical blockade” (Agrest & Gandelsonas, 1973), but accepts, embraces and perfects the opportunistic shape shift of discourse based on the crowd to be addressed.

In 2010, during a lecture at the American University of Beirut, he confesses to some of the political implications of the building circulation and overall massing. When bringing forth the concept of unity, of “not avoiding each other” (AUBatLebanon, 2010), one cannot help but think of most expressive reforms in the recent Chinese history, documented in depth by “The Great Leap Forward”, all of which have been meant to move China forward under the great umbrella of “unity”. The realm of the collective, as interpreted by Richard Sennett, is “simply a place where strangers meet. The difference between public and private lies in the amount of knowledge one person or group has about others”. (Sennett, 2011) Related to the issues that Toyo Ito is raising regarding architecture’s assumed role as the vehicle for constructing symbolism in China, CCTV is – regardless of Koolhaas’ official intention – a central part to the image of the new Central Business District. Potentially the most interesting part of the AUB lecture is the statement which identifies the building’s ambitions with the will to reach out and integrate in a larger formal and urban context. The criticism brought to architectural photographers, a “group of very limited and narrow minded people always trying for the money shot” (AUBatLebanon, 2010) gives the occasion to present a reading

KOOLHAAS’ CCTV

of the finalized project in OMA’s vision: a series of images taken from the surrounding hutongs, and the claim that the building’s unstable lines and imperfect blast-screen structural grid can play into the heterogeneity of the traditional Chinese urban fabric. I rather not dwell long on the issue of visual effect and metaphor; suffice saying that while some people compare the building to a squatting person – again proof of the Chinese hyper sensitivity to indexes and icons – and Koolhaas refuses to acknowledge publicly any other images but the ones obscuring the large void in the center, the unavoidable truth of the matter is that CCTV does have a large void right in the center of it. This is the troublesome perversion of semiotics: while being an admirable icon and symbol, CCTV fails at indexically showing the diagrammatic objectivity embedded in its massing. “Monumental buildings have always marked cities. [...] The spectacular architecture we call today “starchitecture” makes use of this same theatricality which positions the viewer outside, a spectator divorced from the inner workings of the building; the most arresting current example is Rem Koolhaas’ CCTV building in Beijing, a guarded fortress isolated in open space meant to be appreciated from afar.” (Sennett, 2011) This specific detachment, independent of the volition of the architect is ultimately the only visual and affective lasting impact such a building has on the public.

CCTV

The connection that the AUB Lecture can have with the Great Leap Forward is established at a meta-political representational manifestation, namely the “representation of power and the inscription of building into a regime of power and its relationship to the construction of an identity” (Zaera-Polo, Monumentality, 2011). The CCTV is firstly visually relevant as seen in the background of the hutongs since it eludes visually the strange theme-neighborhoods abundantly documented in “The Great Leap Forward”. Secondly, the slogan of “the loop”, “the collective”, has to be a perfectly moral value for the CCTV employees who will inhabit the building daily. The prophetic slogans coined by Deng Xiaopeng “Finding Truth from facts” – and the likes – are masterfully echoed in the “good intentions” Koolhaas expressed through his own memorable “sound-bites” describing the building.

Ultimately, why would this not work just fine...

EPILOGUE

There is no such a thing as “the ordinary”. Even the most mundane routined gesture, the most “ordinary” action, if repeated by 10 different individuals shall grant 10 extra-ordinary results, for the very reason that we are all different. I do not believe in cliché as much as I do not believe in originality. Maybe Rem Koolhaas’ apparent lack of manifesto is precisely a manifesto, maybe the cunning multiple readings of a project both at a theoretical inchoate stage and at a literal built one are meant to be just parts of a puzzle whose missing pieces we all – collectively and individually – hold in ourselves. The very idea of an expanded collective and individual experience being the lens through which we perceive the world, changes the world both at the level of our active involvement and at the level of our passive observation. The architectural trip is ultimately irrelevant; it is utterly isolated and through its very singularity in a field of spacetime throughouth the non-linear development of a project it becomes inconsequential; it becomes a mere node in a large web.

I propose to look at the trip as transportation in time, space and intellectual depth; the trip as a vehicle for understanding not the context, not the action to be taken on the context, but the architect’s own modus operandi. In 21’st century, when “communication technologies have radically altered the sense of place and the public realm can be found in cyber-space as much as physically on the ground” (Sennett, 2011), I personally could not be less interested in the actionreaction type of trip-outcome presented by the work of the Smithsons in the East End, Van Eyck in Dogonland, Venturi and Scott Brown in Vegas, Banham in LA, Ito and Bow Wow in Tokyo. They are infinitely inspiring, but I prefer to keep them as part of my night stand bibliography. The myriad factors, the alienating complexity, perversion, deceit and intellectual buoyancy packaged in a project such as the one discussed can only be addressed by a practice that before anything knows itself best. I believe in the in-cursion rather than ex-cursion. This is the real trip, the one that aims at defining a work model over time with a series of projects supporting it, rather than searching for role models to inspire the development of the practice. I believe in the architect that still searches for the unattainable condition of the sublime.

WORKS CITED

Agrest, D., & Gandelsonas, M. (1973). Semiotics and Architecture: Ideological Consumption or Theoretical Work. In Oppositions 1 (pp. 93-100). New York: IAUS. AUBatLebanon. (2010, May 31). Rem Koolhaas Lecture on OMAâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work. Retrieved January 12, 2012, from YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQdjKR8hYxI cctvupload. (2009, 01 01). Rem Koolhaas and CCTV new site. Retrieved 01 08, 2012, from YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJJK0R5o4zk Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1987). A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press. Ito, T. (2004). Big time dilemmas. In R. Koolhaas, Content (pp. 448-449). Taschen. Koolhaas, R. (2004). Content. Taschen. Koolhaas, R. (2001). Great Leap Forward. Taschen. Sennett, R. (2011). The Public Realm. Retrieved November 21, 2011, from RichardSennet: www.richardsennett.com/ site/SENN/Templates/General2.aspx?pageid=16 Sloterdijk, P. (2005). Atmospheric Politics. In B. Latour, & P. Weibel, Making Things Public (pp. 944-951). Cambridge: MIT Press. Van Toorn, R. (2004, January). Content - Rem Koolhaas/ OMA/AMO. Domus , p. 10.bH.

Zaera Polo, A. (2010). Patterns and Fabrics. In B. Pell, The Articulate Surface (pp. 165-161). Basel: Birkhauser GmbH. Zaera-Polo, A. (2011, April). Monumentality. (R. Ghilic-Micu, Interviewer) Zaera-Polo, A. (2011). Semiotics. (R. Ghilic-Micu, Interviewer)

ISBN 978-1-56592-479-6

9 781565 924796 RAZVAN GHILIC-MICU

2012