! ! !
! !
! ! !! ! ! !
!1 CHARNEL–HOUSE: TA XO N O M Y O F FA I L E D I N V E N T I O N S
by Timothy Burke
! !
VO LU M E I
TA XO N O M Y O F FA I L E D I D E A S
!2 ALSO IN THE
CHARNEL–HOUSE
V O LU M E I : T A XO N O M Y
OF
SERIES
FAILED IDEAS
V O LU M E I I : T A XO N O M Y
OF THE
O B L I G A T O RY
V O LU M E I I I : T A XO N O M Y
OF THE
CONDEMNED
! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !
! Submitted for the Master s of Architecture final year design prog ram, School of Architecture and the Built Environment, Univer sity of Newcastle, Australia. ©
TIMOTHY BURKE
2014
! !
! !
! ! TA XO N O M Y O F FA I L E D I N V E N T I O N S Timothy Burke !! !! ! CHARNEL–HOUSE:
VO LU M E I
TA XO N O M Y O F FA I L E D I D E A S
!3
!4
! ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to acknowledge and give special credit to Tom Rivard & Michael Chapman for their inspiration tutorage this past year, your wealth of knowledge & passion for architecture succeeds the fathomable. I’d also like to thank those responsible for one of the best architectural educations the country has to offer: John Roberts, Derren Lowe, Yannis Zavoleas, Cathy Smith, Chris Tucker & Ramsey Awad, as well as tutors Judy, Lachlan, Paula & Martin. My education would not be complete without the special guidance of professors Richard Leplastrier, Peter Stutchbury, Lawrence Nield, and Lindsay & Kerry Clare: thank you for imparting your wisdom & teaching me power of radical & poetic ideas.
I’d like to thank those who dedicated themselves this year to help turn the often indecisive, obscure & outlandish butter paper sketches into beautiful models. Full credit goes to Ben, Dan & Dom whose skill & generosity know no bounds, & to whom I am indebted for the past few years of extremely rewarding model making. Thank you to Jane, Cho, Simon, Andy & all those who had not just donated their time to help make models, but (in many cases) provided emotion support as well.
I would like to acknowledge my mother & father who have supported me in various capacities over the past six tumultuous years. Thank you to Ridley for a lifetime of friendship both from home & from across the ocean, & to Susie for your continued support, criticism, patience & (occasionally) soup. Finally I would like to acknowledge my family of fellow students who have made the studio home throughout our architectural education together, & whose camaraderie has made the past six year so incredibly memorable.
!5
! PRE(R)AMBLE ,Our world, like a charnel-house, lies strewn with the detritus of dead epochs.’
—Le Corbusier
The Charnel-House: Taxonomy of Failed Inventions is a speculative project situated on the margin of Newcastle’s working harbour & the former Forgacs dockyard in Carrington that allegorically investigates the emancipatory power of the experimental machine to the human experience. Taking the theoretical trope of ‘building machines’ recurrent in the architectural avant-garde, the CharnelHouse is a repository that interrogates the makings of industry. The architecture is posited as an alchemistic machine that takes the sterilis of productive capital—the un-moded byproduct of invention of marginal exchange-value or use-value—& refunctions these objects to reveal their latent cult-value. Rather than a study of materialism, the architecture employs post-structuralist tactics to deconstruct the meaning of objects & conducts a taxonomy that arranges them in dispersive ways.
The Charnel–House is a year-long thesis project conducted during the final year of the Masters of Architecture. The work undertaken over the course of the year will be condensed into in this volume, mapping the changing trajectory of the project as it developed. By this virtue, this volume presents a taxonomy of failed ideas. Much like the Charnel–House, within the pages of this text reside multiple deceased projects, terminated in partial realisation. Here the failed ideas of each re-iteration of the thesis project will be laid out to air. Although ‘failures’ as projects, they remain laden with possibility. In retrospection one way see that each project in-fact posits various interpretations of the same idea: they simply draw from different inspirations or are sited at different provocative sites. In this way each failed idea may be read as a success, without which the Charnel-House project could not exist.
!6
!
! CONTENTS PA RT O N E
FAILURES OF REASON 9 101. The Capital of Produce .........................................................................................11 102. A Diagram of Productive Capital .........................................................................27 103. The Capitalisation of Knowledge .........................................................................39 104. Capitalisation and Loss ..........................................................................................61 PA RT T W O
TAXONOMY OF DESIRE 95 201. Machines of the Avant-Garde: A Prelude .............................................................97 202. Taxonomies of Curiosity: a Dialectical Reader ..................................................133 203. Charnel–House: Mechanisation of Possibilities ..................................................147 PA RT T H R E E
EPILOGUE 181 301. The Machine Aesthetic: Industrial Tropes of the Architectural Avant-Garde ...183
!7
!8
!9
PA RT O N E
!
FA I LU R E S O F R E A S O N
!10
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
! !
TURN OFF YOUR MIND, RELAX & FLOAT DOWN STREAM.
!
IT IS NOT DYING, IT IS NOT DYING.
J.L., “Tomorrow Never Knows,” Revolver (1966)
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
!
!11
101. THE CAPITAL OF PRODUCE 101a. NEWCASTLE GRAINCORP TERMINAL,
There exists a fascination with grain elevators, that has been a source of inspiration for architects throughout history. For Le Corbusier, grain elevators became the artifice for his ‘three reminders to architects’ in articulating mass & surface in his manifesto Vers une Architecture. In this text, Corbusier borrows imagery from Walter Gropius, who borrowed from Eric Mendelsohn. Grain silos are intrenched in the formations of modernity, and are still the play-things of contemporary architects working in the post-industrial epoch. This fascination emerges not just in architecture, but in art, photography, & philosophy.
Initially drawn by the awe the Graincorp silos command on the edge of Newcastle’s working harbour, the project steered towards a study of commodity & capital. In recent times, Graincorp’s exports where in decline by 60%, with exports going from 1.5 million tonnes of grain per annum to 45000 tones per annum. With a 20% decline in staff, the terminal was reduced to 23 people to operate the monolithic stores. The project posited the future occupation of the grain silos, while interested in maintaing the industrial amenity of the working harbour.
As the project developed, it became obvious that the decline was being caused in part by priority coal exports. With the complexity of scale and a level of fetisisation that was counterproductive to rigorous intervention, this project became the first of what would be a long line of failed ideas.
!12
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
 
Plate 101a. First grain silos in Newcastle (c.1950), SOURCE: University of Newcastle, Cultural Collections.
!
!13
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
,[I]n America, the motherland of industry, there are great industrial structures which, in their unconscious majesty, are superior to even our best German buildings of that type. The grain elevators of Canada and South America [...] are almost as impressive in the monumental power as the buildings of ancient Egypt.’
–Walter Gropius (1913)1
1Walter
Gropius, 'DieEntwicklung moderner Industriebaukunst,’ in Jahrbüch des Deutschen Werkbundes (1913): 17-22.
!14
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
 
Plate 101b. Newcastle Graincorp. terminal, taken from AGRI grain termina SOURCE: author
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
 
Plate 101c. Newcastle Graincorp. terminal, taken from the eastern harbour basin SOURCE: author
!15
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
101b. SITE, 
Plate 101d. Site Sketches, SOURCE: author
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
 
Plate 101e. Site Sketches, SOURCE: author
!17
!18 101c. CONCEPTION,
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
Plate 101f. Walter Gropius, Gothic Industrial Architectural Fantasy (1932-1936), SOURCE: Gropius, 'DieEntwicklung moderner Industriebaukunst,’ (1913): 17 - 22.
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
 
Plate 101g. Le Corbusier, Canadian Grain Stores & Elevators (1923), SOURCE: Le Corbusier. Vers une Architecture (Paris: G. Cres, 1923); 29.
!19
!20
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
! !  
!
! !
Erich Mendelsohn, Washburn-Crosby Elevator, Buffalo USA (1924) Plate 101h. Erich Mendelsohn, Washburn-Crosby Elevator, Buffalo USA (1924), Erich Mendelsohn, Amerika: Bilderbuch eines Architeckten (Berlin: Rudolf Mosse Buchverlag, 1926).
SOURCE:
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
 
Plate 101i. Hugh Ferriss, River-rail elevator, Kansas City (1941), SOURCE: Hugh Ferriss, The Metropolis of Tomorrow, 1928.
!21
!22
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
!
!
Plate 101j. Bernd & Hilla Becher, ‘Grain Elevators,’ (c.1977-2006), Bernd & Hilla Becher, Getreidesilos (Munich: Schirmer/Mosel Verlag, 2006).
SOURCE:
!
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
!!
Plate 101k. Frank Gohlke, Grain Elevator Under Repair, Minneapolis USA (1974), SOURCE: Frank Gohlke, “Grain Elevators,” Places Journal (March 2010).
!23
!24
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
โ ฉ
Plate 101l. Alvar Aalto, Toppila, Oulu Finland (1931) SOURCE: Daniel Segerlรถv (2009).
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
 
Plate 101m. Thomas Heatherwick , V&A Waterfront Grain Silos, Cape Town (2013) SOURCE: Thomas Heatherwick Studio, Designboom (2014).
!25
!26
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
LAY DOWN ALL THOUGHTS, SURRENDER TO THE VOID.
!
IT IS SHINING, IT IS SHINING.
J.L., “Tomorrow Never Knows,” Revolver (1966)
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
!
!27
102. A DIAGRAM OF PRODUCTIVE CAPITAL 102a. PORT WARATAH COAL SERVICES: CARRINGTON TERMINAL,
Port Waratah is the world’s largest coal port. It is responsible for 70% of Australia's total coal exports, with coal representing 95% of the total export output for Port Newcastle. This project developed during the release of a NASA-funded study predicting the impending collapse of industrial civilisation. The study found that the continuation of capital intensive industry will further the stratification of wealth, dividing society into elites & the masses, and causing eventual collapse under a strained global ecology. The irony here is the full reversal of the Marist episteme, and the return of the divide between the proletarian & the bourgeoisie.
This project attempted to take a polemical stance that intercepted the cycle of capitalism. It was concerned with the architectonics of industry as a transformative apparatus, which came from a combined reading of the industrial rigorist, Sigfried Giedion, and the marxist & cultural critic, Walter Benjamin. Taking from Benjamin’s major themes of auratic perception, & the aestheticisation of politics, the idea was to refunction the existing industrial structures. By deconstructing the diagram of commodity (which exists in the stockpiling of coal) and exchange (which exists within the artifices of exportation), the potential of the project was interrogated.
Although the project was laden with potential, it was the polemics that lead to its demise. It met criticism with closed minds, while new readings led to new ideas. This project became the second failed idea.
!28
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
 
Plate 102a. Site model, SOURCE: author
!
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
!29
,Brecht elaborated the concept of Umfunktionierung for the transformation of the forms and instruments of production by a progressive intelligentsia—interested in the liberation of the means of production and thus useful in the class struggle. […] [D]o not simply transmit the apparatus of production without simultaneously changing it to the maximum extent possible in the direction of socialism.’ –Walter Benjamin (1934)2
!
! Walter Benjamin, “The Author as Producer” in Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings, (New York: Schocken Books, 1978): 230. 2
!30
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
 
Plate 102b. Carrington & Orica, taken from the Agri Grain terminal, SOURCE: author
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
 
Plate 102c. Coal surge bin (face), taken from the western arm of the Hunter River, SOURCE: author
!31
!32 102b. SITE,
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
 
Plate 102d. Newcastle harbour & watercourses, SOURCE: author
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
 
Plate 102e. Figure ground plan of Newcastle harbour, SOURCE: author
!33
!34
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
 
Plate 102f. Site diagram, SOURCE: author
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
 
Plate 102g. Site plan, SOURCE: author
!35
!36
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
 
Plate 102h. Plan of coal loaders, SOURCE: author
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
 
Plate 102i. Section through coal loader, SOURCE: author
!37
!38
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
YET YOU MAY SEE THE MEANING OF WITHIN.
!
IT IS BEING, IT IS BEING.
J.L., “Tomorrow Never Knows,” Revolver (1966)
!
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
!39
103. THE CAPITALISATION OF KNOWLEDGE 103a. BROADMEADOW LOCOMOTIVE DEPOT,
In a decisive shift from Newcastle’s working harbour, the next idea resides in the population centre of Newcastle: the suburbs. Situated on the rail line that connects Newcastle to Sydney lays in partial ruin the former Broadmeadow locomotive depot. On the margin of being condemned from damage caused by industrial contamination, earthquakes, flooding and vandalism, it’s duel turntables and roundhouses make it the last surviving locomotive depot of its type. The building is sited behind the Hunter School of Performing Arts, a progressive fine arts primary and secondary school. Taking inspiration from the avant-gardist schools of Vkhutemas (Вхутемас) & the Bauhaus, the idea was to project the school towards applied arts, cultivating an intelligentsia with skills in industrial design, craftsmanship and creative technological production.
Within the context of a progressive and creative education, new workshops could be operated free from economic determination and utilitarian motives. Instead the creative production within the school cultivates pedagogical discourse through classes and public performances with program that consists of progressive student workshops, studios, an experimental performance venue and night school. Notions of the interior and experimental theatre involved a reading of Frederick Kiesler’s Endless Theater, and was developed through speculative study models. The dialectics between new fabric against the existing draw heavily from Martin Heidegger who suggests that confrontation with technology must be both akin to technology and fundamentally different.
The idea would eventually fail as it struggled with 17.8 hectares of contaminated landscape and the deft touch required for the roundhouse. This lead to conflicting articulation of the theory that was being interrogated, while sudden act of desecration drew the focus of the project to a new site.
!40
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
 
Plate 103a. Photographs taken within the roundhouse, Jaysee & Dali 1.0, Broadmeadow Railway Locomotive Depot (2011).
SOURCE:
!
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
!41
,we are beyond the modern machine age, […] the machine is now treated as a romantic ruin.’ –Hal Foster (1987)3
3Hal
Foster, ‘Concluding Notes,’ in Pamphlet Architecture no.12 (1987): 63.
!42
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
Plate 103b. I won’t tell if you don’t, SOURCE: author
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
 
Plate 103c. Aestheticising the ruin, SOURCE: author
!43
!44 103b. SITE, 
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
Plate 103d. Site plan, SOURCE: author
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
 
Plate 103e. Roof plan of existing architecture, SOURCE: author
!45
!46
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
 
Plate 103f. Ground plan of existing architecture, SOURCE: author
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
 
Plate 103g. Section through turntable, SOURCE: author
!47
!48 103c. Conception, 
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
Plate 103h. Concept sketches, SOURCE: author
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
 
Plate 103h. Concept submission, SOURCE: author
!49
!50
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
 
Plate 103i. Analytical study: point fields, SOURCE: author
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
 
Plate 103j. Analytical study: concentric fields, SOURCE: author
!51
!52
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
 
Plate 103k. Model study: turntable casts, SOURCE: author
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
 
Plate 103l. Model study: turntable variations, SOURCE: author
!53
!54
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
 
Plate 103m. Model study: radial track display, SOURCE: author
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
 
Plate 103n. Model study: roundhouse fragment, SOURCE: author
!55
!56
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
 
Plate 103o. Mass study: solid, SOURCE: Author
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
 
Plate 103p. Mass study: void, SOURCE: Author
!57
!58
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
 
Plate 103q. Megastructure: turntable #1, SOURCE: author
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
 
Plate 103r. Megastructure: turntable #2, SOURCE: author
!59
!60
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
AND IGNORANCE AND HATE MOURN THE DEAD.
!
IT IS BELIEVING, IT IS BELIEVING.
J.L., “Tomorrow Never Knows,” Revolver (1966)
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
!
!61
104. CAPITALISATION AND LOSS 104a. FORGACS DOCKYARD,
This idea is situated on the post-industrial site of the former Forgacs Dockyard in Carrington, Newcastle NSW. The project accepts the condition of the loss in manufacturing on the site, in light of the state governments sale of the land—as part of the ports 98 year lease to China Merchants Holdings & Hastings Funds Management—and the federal governments deregulation of tertiary education fees. The idea of the project was to counterpoint these events and the institutional commodification of knowledge by deploying a labyrinthine architecture that rejects economic determinism and rationalistic utilitarianism. Instead the school offers a free-market of goods and knowledge through manufacturing and the arts that cultivates an entrepreneurship of invention that can be likened to the avant-garde schools of the Bauhaus and Vkhutemas in the 1920s.
The labyrinthine qualities are implemented to to break down Taylorisitic and capitalistic prescriptions by deploying the Brectian concept of Gesamtkunstwerk — that is, overlapping dialects i.e, performer/ spectator, production/consumption indoors/outdoors, & public/private — allowed by a user directed mixed-use ‘Free-space.’ Departing from linear and hierarchical modes of education, demarcated faculties are programatically overlapped. The labyrinth privileges the ideas of the Situationists, and notions of Baudelaire’s flâneur, free to transverse space & open to chance encounters. Here the utopian aspects of the 1960s megastrutualists have been adopted in the creation of a gantry superstructure that supports the projects function of manufacturing and eduction by spanning over the labyrinth. The project involved a reading of Manfredo Tafuri’s the Sphere and the Labyrinth, and Constant Nieuwenhuys’ New Babylon project in applying an open architecture free for inhabitation by manufacturers, students and educators.
!62
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
 
Plate 104a. Site section, SOURCE: author
!
!63
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
,As Marx predicted, invention has become a branch of consumption. Today’s technology is essentially devoid of risk that attends any truly inventive or creative acts. This contemporary technology and the machines it produces are unrelated to the human values that motivated the early inventors.’ — Robert McCarter (1987)4
4Robert
McCarter, ‘Escape from the revolving door: Architecture and the Machine,’ in Pamphlet Architecture no.12 (1987): 11.
!64
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
 
Plate 104b. Machine shed, now demolished, SOURCE: author
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
Plate 104c. Slipway and winch-house, now demolished, SOURCE: author
!65  
!66 104b. SITE, 
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
Plate 104d. Newcastle & the void, SOURCE: author
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
 
Plate 104e. Intercepting the void, SOURCE: author
!67
!68
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
 
SOURCE:
Plate 104f. Forgacs dockyard, University of Newcastle, Cultural Collections.
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
 
Plate 104g. The void of Forgacs dockyard, SOURCE: author
!69
!70
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
 
SOURCE:
Plate 104h. BHP, University of Newcastle, Cultural Collections.
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
Plate 104i. The void of BHP, SOURCE: author
!71
!72 104c. Conception, 
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
Plate 104i. Knowledge & commodity: Lineal vs cyclical, SOURCE: author
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
 
Plate 104j. The labyrinth: applying the Venn diagram, SOURCE: author
!73
!74
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
 
Plate 104k. The site (before the void), SOURCE: author
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
 
Plate 104l. The site (after the void), SOURCE: author
!75
!76
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
 
Plate 104m. Building mass around the void, SOURCE: author
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
 
Plate 104n. Eroding the mass around the void (applying the diagram), SOURCE: author
!77
!78
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
 
Plate 104o. Program is taken as free-space within the erosion, SOURCE: author
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
 
Plate 104p. The completed labyrinth: the artistic apparatus, SOURCE: author
!79
!80
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
 
Plate 104q. The labyrinth: ground plan, SOURCE: author
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
 
Plate 104r. The labyrinth: upper level plan, SOURCE: author
!81
!82
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
 
Plate 104s. Moving through the labyrinth, SOURCE: author
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
 
Plate 104t. Moving through the labyrinth, SOURCE: author
!83
!84
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
 
Plate 104u. Workshop & surrounds, SOURCE: author
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
 
Plate 104v. Theater & surrounds, SOURCE: author
!85
!86
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
 
Plate 104w. Section through the labyrinth, SOURCE: author
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
 
Plate 104x. The labyrinth & city, SOURCE: author
!87
!88
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
 
Plate 104y. Form, SOURCE: author
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
 
Plate 104z. Liquid happiness, SOURCE: author
!89
!90
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
Plate 104α. Site model, SOURCE: author
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
Plate 104β. Site model, SOURCE: author
!91
!92
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
Plate 104δ. Rick and Pete admiring the slipway winch, now demolished, SOURCE: author
!
!93
FA I L U R E S O F R E A S O N
,Opinions are to the vast apparatus of social existence what oil is to machines: one does not go up to a turbine and pour machine oil over it; one applies a little to hidden spindles and joints that one has to know.’ –Walter Benjamin (1928)5
5Walter
Benjamin, ‘One-Way Street,’ in Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986): 45.
!94
!95
PA RT T W O
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
! !
!96
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
BUT LISTEN TO THE COLOUR OF YOUR DREAMS.
!
IT IS NOT LEAVING, IT IS NOT LEAVING.
J.L., “Tomorrow Never Knows,” Revolver (1966)
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
!
!97
201. MACHINES OF THE AVANT-GARDE: A PRELUDE 201a. “BUILDING MACHINES”
Driving beyond the analogues of architecture, one might discover the threads of philosophy and art engaged full flight with the questions of technicism. Here, at the anterior of architectural discourse many architects and theorists have taken samples for their work. To draw a line across the historic development of architecture and the machine, one may always find remnants of the cult of technicism engaged in the progressive avant-garde. One such line can (and will) be drawn though the volumes of pamphlet architecture, as the premise of ‘architecture as research’. The work represented in this material is a rich source of inspiration in implicating paper architecture as a discourse field of architecture. The following pages are extracts from Building Machines (12); Mosquitoes: a Handbook for Survival (14); War and Architecture (15); Architecture as a Translation of Music (16); & Reading Drawing Building (19).
! ! !
!98
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
!
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
!99
!100
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
!101
!102
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
!
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
!103
!104
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
!105
!106
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
!107
!108
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
!109
!110
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
!111
!112
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
!113
!114
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
Plate 201a. Albert Renger-Patzsch, Industrial photography of Essen & Lübeck (c.1928-29) Ann & Jurgen Wilde (eds), Albert Reger-Patzsch, Photography of Objectivity (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1998): 29-79.
SOURCE:
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
!115
200a. A TECHNOLOGICAL PHOTO-ESSAY
Taking from the trope of the photo-essay of the early Wiemar photographers, the following section constructs an arguments through images alone. This will form a dialectical reader between the each precedent on facing pages, and as the serial overview. Here, the praxis of aestheticisng an argument will be used to construct a technological photo-essay that provides a taxonomy on the architectural and cultural influences of the machine.
In his essay Author as Producer, Walter Benjamin commented on the Wiemar photo-essays, commenting on the importance of transmitting the apparatus of production (photography) as a transforming politicising tool. 6 Interested in the revolutionary content these apparātī Susan Buck-Morss recognises that Benjamin borrowed the dialectical potential of these collages as a discursive technique in his Arcades Project. She writes,
,Benjamin viewed the world of industrial object as fossils, as the trace of living history that can be read from the surfaces of the surviving objects, and it introduces the significance of visual “concreteness” in Benjamin's methodology of dialectical images.’ 7
! !
6Benjamin, 7
“the Author as Producer,” pp.88-90.
Susan Buck-Morss, The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1989). p.56.
!116
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
Plate 201b. Giovanni Battista Piranesi, “The Drawbridge”, Carceri (1745) SOURCE: Piranèse, Le Carceri d’Invenzione, plate vii.
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
 
Plate 201c. Iakov Chernikhov, Gothic Industrial Architectural Fantasy (1932-1936), SOURCE: Ross Wolfe, Cultural Divide: The "Paper Architecture" of the USSR (2014).
!117
!118
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
โ ฉ
Plate 201d. Lรกszlรณ Moholy-Nagy, Light-Space Modulator (1929), Estate of Lรกszlรณ Moholy-Nagy, Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York (2014)
SOURCE:
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
 
Plate 201e. Aleksandr Rodchenko, Hanging Construction (1920), SOURCE: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA).
!119
!120
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
 
Plate 201f. Max Ernst, The Elephant Celebes (1921), TATE, ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London (2014).
SOURCE:
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
!
SOURCE:
Plate 201g. Bernd & Hilla Becher, Gasbehälter (1963), Bernd & Hilla Becher, Gasbehälter (Munich: Schirmer/Mosel Verlag, 1993).
!121
!122
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
 
Plate 201h. Douglas Darden, Oxygen House: a Near Triptych on the Act of Breathing (1993), SOURCE: Douglas Darden, Condemned Buildings, (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1993): 154.
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
 
Plate 201i. Seventy inch cylinder engine, I can’t remember, the internet? Does it really matter?
SOURCE:
!123
!124
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
 
Plate 201j. Fritz Lang, Metropolis (1927), SOURCE: Erich Pommer, Babelsberg Studios
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
 
Plate 201k. Lewis Hine, Powerhouse Mechanic (1920), SOURCE: Pamphlet Architecture no.12 (1987): 9.
!125
!126
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
Plate 201l. Lebbeus Woods, ‘Concentric Field,’ in Centricity (1987), SOURCE: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA)
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
SOURCE:
Plate 201m. Oskar Schlemmer, Diagram for Gesture Dance (1926), Karin von Maur, Oskar Schlemmer: German, 1888–1943 (Oxford University Press, 2009).
!127
!128
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
 
Plate 201n. Hugo Gernsback, wearing his TV Glasses, in Life magazine (1963) SOURCE: Matthew Lasar, The man who foresaw science fiction (2010).
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
Plate 201o. Robert ParkeHarrison, The Architect’s Brother (2012), SOURCE: Friedman Benda, & Adam Reich, Estate of Lebbeus Woods
!129
!130
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
Plate 201p. Emery Blagdon, Healing Machine (c1960–2004), SOURCE: Kohler Foundation
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
 
Plate 201q. Lebbeus Woods, Aerial Paris (1989), Friedman Benda, & Adam Reich, Estate of Lebbeus Woods
SOURCE:
!131
!132
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
YET YOU MAY SEE THE MEANING OF WITHIN.
!
IT IS BEING, IT IS BEING.
J.L., “Tomorrow Never Knows,” Revolver (1966)
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
!
!133
202. TAXONOMIES OF CURIOSITY: A DIALECTICAL READER 202a. SCATOLOGY: A TAXONOMIC PHOTO-ESSAY
,Heterology: Science of the altogether other. The term agiology would be, perhaps, more precise, but the double sense of agios must be understood (analogous to the double sense of sacer), both defiled and holy. But above all it is the term scatology (the science of filth) that in present-day circumstances (the specialisation of the sacred) retains incontrovertible expressive value, as the doublet of an abstract term such as heterology. –Georges Bataille (1970)8
!
8Georges
Bataille, "La valeur d'usage de D. A. F. de Sade (1) (Lettre ouverte à mes camarades actuels)," in Œuvres complètes, vol. II, ed. Denis Hollier (Paris: Gallimard, 1970), pp.54-69, as cited in Hollier, Against Architecture: Writings of Georges Bataille, p.98. Emphasis in original.
!134
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
 
Plate 202a, Georg Hainz, Treasure Chest (1666), SOURCE: Rocaille, Kunst und Wunderkammer
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E  
Plate 202b, Domenico Remps, Wunderkammer (c.1690), SOURCE: Rocaille, Kunst und Wunderkammer
!135
!136
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
Plate 202c, Wayne Chisnall, ‘The City’ Mobile Cabinets of Curiosity (2011), SOURCE: Trove, ˆThe Event, (2011)
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E  
Plate 202d, Joel Daavid, the Golden Mean: Cabinet of Curiosities (2010), SOURCE: A Cabinet of Curiosities, Gallery Meltdown, Las Angeles (2010).
!137
!138
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
!  
SOURCE:
Plate 202e, Karl Blossfeldt, Milk Plant Working Collage, Ann & Jurgen Wilde, eds. Karl Blossfeldt: Working Collages (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001): plate 59
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
SOURCE:
Plate 202f, Bernd & Hilla Becher, Gasometers (1982–2002), Becher, Bernd & Hilla Becher, Typologies, (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2003): 61
!139
!140
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
!
Plate 202g, Enlargements of Greek & Gallic coins in DOCUMENTS, George Bataille, “Le Cheval Académque,” DOCUMENTS 1 (April 1929): p.27
SOURCE:
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
Plate 202h. Man Ray, L'Etoile de Mer (1928), Jacques-André Boiffard, Man Ray, (Cohen studio, 1928).
SOURCE:
!141
!142
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
!! !!
SOURCE:
Plate 202i, Large-format camera, Frank Van Ripe, "Documenting Industrial History by Photography” (1968).
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
 
Plate 202j, Frederick Kiesler, Vision Machine (1937), Frederick and Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation (2006.
SOURCE:
!143
!144
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
 
Plate 202k. Alexander Rodchenko, Portrait with Flacon (c.1930), SOURCE: Sepherot Foundation (Liechtenstein, 2011).
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
โ ฉ
SOURCE:
Plate 202l, Lรกszlรณ Moholy-Nagy, The Law of Series (1925), The Moholy-Nagy Foundation, Moholy-Nagy Online Art Database, Ann Arbor, Michigan
!145
!146
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
 
Plate 203a. From the labyrinth to the harbour: The Charnel-House emerges, SOURCE: author
!
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
!147
203. CHARNEL–HOUSE: MECHANISATION OF POSSIBILITIES 203a. THE POST-INDUSTRIAL CHARNEL–HOUSE
From the detritus of the post-industrial epoch lays, buried beneath the surface, material of profound inspiration. Behind every machine that inhabits this world lays the ruins of the failed ancestry of machines before it. This technological Darwinism cultivates the progressive pursuit of the supreme machine. However within the arcane and the outmoded, lays potential to reinvest the spent labour in the makings of mankind.
The Charnel-House is a speculative project situated on the margin of Newcastle’s working harbour & the post- industrial site of the former Forgacs dockyard in Carrington. The project is positioned as an allegory that investigates the emancipatory power to the human experience of the experimental machine. Taking the theoretical trope of ‘building machines’ recurrent in the architectural avant-garde, the Charnel-House is an archive that (re)posits the makings of industry as a dialectic to the unrealised potential of Newcastle’s post- industrial aura. !
The architecture of the Charnel-House is posited as an alchemistic machine that takes the sterilis of productive capital—the un-moded byproduct of invention of marginal exchange-value or use-value—and refunctions these objects to reveal their latent cult-value. Rather than a study of materialism, the architecture conducts an ontological autopsia, employing post structuralist tactics to deconstruct the meaning of objects. From here, a taxonomy of augmented morphologies dispersively archives the objects of study in oblique and poetic ways.
•
•
•
!148
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
 
Plate 203b. The pre-industrial edge of Throsby Creek (1925), SOURCE: University of Newcastle, Cultural Collections.
!
!149
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
,[I]t is by their very uselessness, [...] that [the] original, archaic machines remain open to contemporary experiment and experience. [...] In our contemporary age of emancipated experiences, the true modern spirit may dwell in an anachronism: the experimental machine.’ —Robert McCarter (1987)9
9
Robert McCarter, “Escape from the Revolving Door: Architecture and the Machine” in Pamphlet Architecture no.12 (1987): 11.
!150
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
 
Plate 203c. First sketch: the Charnel-House emerges as an artifice separated from the labyrinth. SOURCE: author
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
!151
203b. CATALYST
Within the failed ideas the proceeded the Charnel-House existed a preoccupation with a single idea from a slither of theory by Walter Benjamin. Within his great unfinished analogue, The Arcades Project, Benjamin recognised the power of ferroporous architecture in the first machine age as dream-houses of the collective. Situated in the urban-industrial episteme, these structures transcended material worth and could be seen as cultural apparatuses where the cult-value and exchange-value of objects can never be exhausted.
In the post-industrial Charnel-House, the experiential (or phenomenological), spatial and tectonic context of the objects that come here (the architecture) is implicit in the way that they are studied and absorbed. The architecture is a fine tuned instrument that supplies suggestive modes of engagement in far more oblique and poetic ways than any archive (dares?). By locating the architecture as an island in the harbour, visitors of the Charnel-House are taken out of their urban habitat and are isolated in this dream-house. The otherness of this place can be likened to Foucault’s Heterotopia, a place which challenges the status quo and emancipates architecture. Therein lies the cult(ural)-value of the archived machines, sculpted by the perspectival context that is set.
•
•
•
!152
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
 
Plate 203d. Developing sketch: The Charnel-House in the harbour, SOURCE: author
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
!153
203c. ARCHITECTURE & MEANING
In the Charnel-House, the ethic may be implicit in the work—much like the allegorical fairytale— however as a piece of architectural research the affect is skewed more towards the application and conglomeration of select strands of discourse to be current episteme. Here one might emphasise or privilege theory in new light, in an action that expands a body of knowledge. Moreover, the theories engaged in the Charnel-House present suggested ways of seeing that might draw attention to the current condition of architecture in lateral and oblique ways. Such a specular mode of engagement requires both a complete and ambiguous picture—such as evident in the Lebbeus Woods' architecture—as to give scope for the mind to wander and imagine.
Fractional and dispersive episodes of imagery provides the context for this approach whereby infinite conclusions can be teased out of the architecture. In this way the architecture acts as a set-piece (or as a window for the mind to wonder) that may, or may not, illuminate the theory directly. Rather it is informed by the means of escape, escape from the failures of architecture, urbanism in the postindustrial dissentary that the project mounts it's critique.
•
! !
•
•
TA XO N O M Y !154 203d. DEVELOPING THE CHARNEL-HOUSE
OF DESIRE
Plate 203e. Developed model, SOURCE: author
!
!155
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
,Technology is therefore no mere means. Technology is a way of revealing […] Techné belongs to bringing forth, to poiesis; it is something poetic. […] The Greeks conceive of techne, producing, in terms of letting appear.’ —Martin Heidegger (1977)10
10
Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, trans. William Lovitt (New York: Harper & Row, 1977): 13
!156
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
 
Plate 203f. Developed model: Lens and shutter, SOURCE: author
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
 
Plate 203g. Developed model: Shutter opening, SOURCE: author
!157
!158
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
 
Plate 203h. Developed model: Lens Caliper, SOURCE: author
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
 
Plate 203i. Developed model: Lens, SOURCE: author
!159
!160
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
 
Plate 203j. Developing Ferrotype, SOURCE: author
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
 
Plate 203k. Developed Ferrotype, SOURCE: author
!161
!162
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
 
Plate 203l. Detail sketches, SOURCE: author
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
!163
203e. A TECHNITONIC ARCHITECTURE
Taking, as a point of departure, the idea that the Charnel-House would be constructed almost entirely by the shipmakers at Forgacs within their existing capacity at the site adjacent to the project location, the project asserts its claim in propagating the rich industrial aura of Newcastle’s working harbour. Already having lost the historic State Dockyard, and with manufacturing in decline resulting from of a competitive global market, this reinvests the funds gained from the sale of the port directly into supporting the threatened skilled labour at Forgacs.
In this simple shift, the tectonics of architecture change radically. An architecture constructed entirely of mild steel, welded together in monolithic blocks replaces traditional architectonics. Steel sections such as universal beams are replaced by offset-bulb plates, welded directly to sheet steel to create rigid structures. The problem of locating a mild steel structure in a high marine environment becomes an opportunity for technitonic solutions: suspended zinc anodes hang in a state of sacrificial corrosion with the duel purpose of cathodic protection and counter-balancing the operations of the machine.
The machine itself is a clepsydra (water clock), that measures the meaning of objects against the rhythms of the tide. Brass calpers holding various types of lenses track vertically in a clockwork motion. When the lenses align, they set off a shutter for a twenty second exposure period. Like a largeformat camera, an image of the harbour passes over the archived object in a crucible to cast a silhouette against a ferrotype plate. These ferrotypes become the signs of objects—a key for taxonomy —repeated en masse in order to form a dispersive language of archived machines.
In creating this rich architectural language, construction details are driven by semantic theory: each component of the machine are reduced to lexicons, then broken into smaller lexemes, and again into smaller morphemes. Although this may simply be a means to an end as a conceptual driver, the idea is that semantics allows a taxonomic architecture that interrogates the meaning and relationships of the architectural elements. Here meaning and experience overlap, or as Foucoult writes “the intrication of a lexicon and an experience.” 11 Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Arthaeology of the Human Sciences (London: Tavistock Publications Limited 1970): 48. Originally published as Les Mots et les Choses: une archéologie des sciences humaines (Paris: Gallimard, 1966) 11
!164
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
!165
!166
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
!167
!168
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
!169
!170
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
!171
!172 203f. A TAXONOMY OF PARTS
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
Plate 203m. Detail model, SOURCE: author
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
 
Plate 203n. Prototype models, SOURCE: author
!173
!174
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
 
Plate 203o. Taxonomy of a lightbulb, SOURCE: author
!
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
 
Plate 203p. Taxonomy of a camera, SOURCE: author
!175
!176
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
 
Plate 203q. Sketches, SOURCE: author
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
 
Plate 203r. Section and plan, SOURCE: author
!177
!178
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
 
Plate 203s. Final diagram, SOURCE: author
!
TA XO N O M Y O F D E S I R E
!179
,The transcendental unity of apperception, mechanistically synthesise sensations received from a mechanistic natural world to produce a concept of experience which is predictably mechanistic in turn.’ —Richard Wolin (1994) 
!180
!
!181
PA RT T H R E E
EPILOGUE
!182
EPILOGUE
SO PLAY THE GAME ‘EXISTENCE’ TO THE END.
!
OF THE BEGINNING, OF THE BEGINNING.
J.L., “Tomorrow Never Knows,” Revolver (1966)
!183
EPILOGUE
!
301. THE MACHINE AESTHETIC: INDUSTRIAL TROPES OF THE ARCHITECTURAL AVANT-GARDE The engineer’s aesthetic and architecture – two things that march together and follow one from the other – the one at its full height, the other in an unhappy state of retrogression. –Le Corbusier (1923)12
In his polemic manifesto, Vers une architecture (Towards a New Architecture, 1923), 13 Le Corbusier (1887– 1965)—one of the leading exponents of the modern movement in architecture—radically espoused architecture and the machine, arguing that a house is a ”machine á habiter.” 14 This notion represented a growing tradition in the architectural avant-garde towards a radically different, mechanised architecture during the tumultuous period of early twentieth century architecture. Drawing from the industrial imagery of grain elevators from America, and technological imagery of aeroplanes and the automobile, Le Corbusier joined German architects Walter Gropius (1883–1969) and Erich Mendelsohn (1887–1953) in using this industrial trope as a polemic to radically transform the trajectory of twentieth century architecture. 15
12
Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture, trans. Frederick Etchells (London: The Architectural Press, 1927):17.
The excepted translation to this reads as “a house is a machine for living in.” Le Corbusier, Vers une Architecture, (Paris: G. Cres, 1923). First published in English as Towards a New Architecture, trans. Frederick Etchells (London: The Architectural Press, 1927). 13
This phrase original published in French reads, "La maison est une machine à habiter.” Le Corbusier continues, writing, [e]very modern man has the mechanical sense. The feeling for mechanics exists and is justified by our daily activities. This feeling in regard to machinery is one of respect, gratitude and esteem. See: Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture: 89, 117-19. 14
15Walter
Gropius published an article titled "The Development of Industrial Buildings,” (1913) which showcased dozen photographs of factories and grain elevators in North America. This article had a strong influence on Le Corbusier and Erich Mendelsohn, both of whom reprinted Gropius's grain elevator pictures between 1920 and 1930. Mendelsohn would be the first to travel to America to draw from the industry there first hand and bring this new perspective back to Europe. See Walter Gropius, “Die Kunst in Industrie und Handel,” Jahrbuch des Deutschen Werkbundes (Jena: Diederichs, 1913).
!184
EPILOGUE
SOURCE:
SOURCE:
Plate 301a. Erich Mendelsohn, “Grain Elevators,” sketches (c.1914-15), Erich Mendelsohn, Amerika: Bilderbuch eines Architeckten. (Berlin: Rudolf Mosse Buchverlag, 1926): 18
Plate 301b. Iakov Chernikhov, “Machine study,” (c.1925), OSA, “Resolution of the Ideological Section of the OSA,” First Conference of the Association of Contemporary Architects, (April 25, 1928): 78
1! 85 The proposed research aims to expand the field of knowledge regarding the role of industry in the first EPILOGUE
machine age during the formation of the trope of the machine aesthetic in the architectural avantgarde. There exists a historical lineage in the vanguard of architecture that spans from the pre-modern industrial revolution to current architectural theory and practice concerning the aestheticisation of technology. Perhaps the clearest example of the repackaging of the modern machine aesthetic is witnessed in Robert McCarter’s essay Escape from the Revolving Door: Architecture and the Machine (1987) in the avant-gardist serial produced by the Princeton Architectural Press. 16 In his essay McCarter conflates the machinist tropes of Le Corbusier, Sigfried Giedion, Walter Benjamin, Reyner Banham, and Kenneth Frampton—as some of the most significant proponents of the discourse—to provide a rereading of machine-architecture in the post-modern era. The essay formed a backdrop to the works of Neil Denari (b.1957), Wes Jones (b.1958), and Michael Sorkin (b.1948) following the success of their 1986 public exhibition at the at the P.S.1 in New York that formed part of a growing revival of technotonic ideas that posit the relationship between architecture and technology. As Denari writes, “reference to the world of machines is reference to the only significant contemporary reality.” 17 More recently—as a result of a changing global economy and the relocation of industrial centres—notions of the machine aesthetic have resurfaced as architects face a growing demand to engage with postindustrial typologies. Rather than a regression into the pastiche revival of outmoded stylisation, this proposed research aims to deconstruct the prevailing fetishisation of industry and technology that exists within the progressive architectural avant-garde to contribute to the contemporary discourse. While the history of the machine aesthetic has been well established in architectural scholarship 18 a historical architectural insight makes available unique perspectives on industry not just significant to the history of architecture, but in a current, rapidly developing technological and pluralist age: an era that is becoming known as the second machine age. 19
16Robert 17Neil
McCarter, “Escape from the Revolving Door: Architecture and the Machine” in Pamphlet Architecture no.12 (1987): 6-12.
Denari, “Track House, Manhattan Beach, California 1886,” Pamphlet Architecture no.12 (1987): 47.
18This
period has been historically examined in depth in by Reyner Banham and Kenneth Frampton. See Reyner Banham, Theory and Design in the First Machine Age (London, 1960); Reyner Banham, A Concrete Atlantis: U.S. Industrial Building and European Modern Architecture, 1900-1925, Cambridge: MIT Press, (1986); Kenneth Frampton, “Labor, Work and Architecture,” in Charles Jencks and George Baird (eds), Meaning and Architecture (New York, 1969): pp.151-167; Kenneth Frampton, “Industrialisation and the Crises in Architecture,” Oppositions no.1 (September 1973). 19See:
Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies, New York: W.W. Norton & Company (2014).
!186
EPILOGUE
Plate 301c. Oskar Schlemmer, “Stair Joke: a Pantomime” (c.1921-1929), SOURCE: Oskar Schlemmer, Theater at the Bauhaus (1925):27
SOURCE:
Plate 301d. László Moholy-Nagy, “Collage R” (1920), The Moholy-Nagy Foundation, Moholy-Nagy Online Art Database, Ann Arbor, Michigan
EPILOGUE
The engineers aesthetic—more commonly refereed to as the machine
aesthetic 20 —was
1! 87 the stylisation
of the emerging rational forms during the period broadly known as the first machine age (1880– 1945). 21 At this time the prevailing zeitgeist was concerned with notions of the machine, evident in such movements as the Deutscher Werkbund (1907-1938) and the Wiemar Republic (1919–1933) of Germany; the Congrès Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne (CIAM, 1928—1959) of France; and the Association of Contemporary Architects (OSA, 1925–1930) and the ASNOVA (Association of New Architects, 1923–1932) of Soviet Russia. These groups brought together important figures of the architectural avant-garde and fostered most of the major architectural movements of the modern age such as the Bauhaus, Constructivism, and the International Style. These group established schools to propagate the mechanist episteme such as the leftist avant-garde wing of the VKhUTEMAS technical institute (1920–1930) in Moscow, and the Staatliches Bauhaus (1919–1933) in Wiemar, Germany. At the Bauhaus, for example, the tropes of the machine aesthetic were developed in architecture by Walter Gropius with the other proponents of the Bauhaus such as the artists Oscar Schelmar (1888– 1943) and László Moholy-Nagy (1895–1946). By proxy El Lissitzky (1890–1941) transferred these ideas in VKhUTEMAS that gestated into Rationalism and Constructivism. This collaboration is significant in historically positioning the radical praxis of the machine and the prevailing notion of Gesamtkunstwerk (the synthesis of arts) 22 to emancipate architecture from self-referential discourses concerned with classicism.
This notion is most clearly articulated in work of the prominent architectural theorist and critic Sigfried Giedion’s (1888—1968), 23 who had strong ties to both Gropius and Moholy-Nagy. In his
20The
Dutch avant-garde artist and architect Theo Van Doesburg has been recognised as the first to use the phrase ‘the machine aesthetic.’ Notably, Van Doesburg was responsible for the founding of the De Stijl movement and had tries to Walter Gropius and László Moholy-Nagy of the Bauhaus in Wiemar, and as El Lissitsky of Vhkutemas in Moscow. 21The
first machine age is considered to have begun with Edward Bellamy’s science fiction novel, Looking Backward: 2000-1887, which imagined the socialist utopia of a nationalised industry. 22Gesamtkunstwerk
literally translates from German to ‘the total artwork.’ See: Annette Michelson, ""Where Is Your Rupture?": Mass Culture and the Gesamtkunstwerk," October 56 (1991). 23Giedion
held the position of the first secretary–general for the CIAM, co-founded with Le Corbusier and responsible for the dissemination of the treatises of modernity. See Sigfried Giedion, Space, Time and Architecture - The Growth of a New Tradition, (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1941) and Eric Mumford, The CIAM Discourse on Urbanism - 1928-1960, (Cambridge MA & London: MIT Press, 2000).
!188
EPILOGUE
Plate 301e. Neil Denari, photograph of a machine on the cover for Pamphlet Architecture 12 (1986), SOURCE: Pamphlet Architecture no.12 (1987): cover
Plate 301f. Neil Denari, “Track House” (1986), SOURCE: Pamphlet Architecture no.12 (1987): 47
EPILOGUE
seminal text Bauen in Frankreich, Bauen in Eisen, Bauen in
Eisenbeton, 24
!189 Giedion asserted future of
architecture depended on industrial typologies one could “extract [...] elements that will be the point of departure for the future,” 25 that is, the new trajectory that would lead to the avant–garde. This has been recognised in recent scholarship by David Dunster who recognised that Giedion, citing the work of Le Corbusier, believed “only these [industrial methods] can combine to produce the new forms that embody the Zeitgeist in a truthful fashion,” 26 beyond the shallow formalism that would lead to a progressive architectural language for the avant–garde. Giedion’s work became an inlet into architectural criticism for the seminal cultural critic and philosopher Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) who is critical in illuminating a historical perspective in the formation of the prevailing zeitgeist concerned with the machine and its socialist underpinnings. In Benjamin's great, unfinished work, Das Passagen-Werk, 27 he supports the transformative value of the industry that Giedion asserts, writing,
from industry and from the machines that were displayed in operation, […] to art and the applied arts, In all these we see a peculiar demand for premature synthesis, of a kind that is characteristic of the Nineteenth Century in other areas as well: think of the total work of art [Gesamtkunstwerk]. Apart from indubitably utilitarian motives, the century wanted to generate a vision of the human cosmos, as launched in a new movement.28
Drawing from this radical epistemological transformation, in recent scholarship Susan Buck-Morss has observed that, “Benjamin was suggesting that the objective (and progressive) tendency of industrialisation is to fuse art and technology.” 29 Here, the theoretical underpinning of Gesamtkunstwerk were significant in dissolving institutional demarcations of the avant-garde that allowed architecture to borrow from industry in the formation of the machine aesthetic. 24Sigfried
Giedion, Bauen in Frankreich, Bauen in Eisen, Bauen in Eisenbeton (Leipzig: Klinkhardt & Biermann, 1928). Translated in English as Building in France, Building in Iron, Building in Ferroconcrete, trans. Duncan Berry (Los Angeles: The Getty Centre for the History of Art, 1995) 25Giedion, 26David
Building in France, Building in Iron, Building in Ferroconcrete: p.85.
Dunster, "Architectural form," Architectural Review 221, no. 1320 (2007): p.37.
Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin (Cambridge & London: Harvard University Press, 1999). Translated text prepared on the basis of Rolf Tiedemann and Hermann Schweppenhäuser, eds., Das Passagen-Werk, vol. 5, Gesammelte Schriften (Berlin: Suhramp Verlag, 1982). 27
28Benjamin,
The Arcades Project: 175-176.
29Buck-Morss,
The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project: pp.125-26.
!190 301a. METHODOLOGY
EPILOGUE
The primary methodology that will structure this research proposal draws from the historical zone of critical theory in order to interweave the multiple avant-gardist strands of the machine. Drawing from fields typically outside the discipline of architecture, the overlapping fields that were critical in the development the machine aesthetic during the fertile interwar period will serve to contribute to an understanding architectural history, particularly in relation to architecture and industrialisation. Critical theory acknowledges the important contribution of knowledge in the field of visual arts provided by Michel Foucault. His text, The Archeolog y of Knowledge (1976), a post-structuralist approach to history can amplify the significance of industry in mapping the machine aesthetic in the architectural avant-garde, and locates it within critical discourse. As Foucault writes,"tradition enables us to isolate the new against a background of permanence, and to transfer its merits to originality, to genius, to the decisions proper to individuals.� 30 By this definition critical theory is essential to conflate the periods of architectural theory in order to demarcate the traditional assumptions of where industry and architecture collide. Therefore this paper will privilege the discussion of tradition to uncover the points of intersection of the various discourses.
Critical theory serves to illuminate the structure upon which knowledge is based in the field of architecture, and develops a dialectical relationship between historical knowledge and critical perspectives of the author. To ensure academic credibility and integrity this thesis will synthesise a study of relevant primary sources, and contemporary, peer reviewed secondary source literature from authors within their relevant disciplines of study. However, it should be noted that qualitative research of this type has limitations and partialities: it is confined by the subjective and interpretative field of critical theory; so too will inevitable exclusions and concessions exist within the scope of this dissertation; and most significantly, literature is confined to existing Anglophone translations. However, within the scope of this research proposal, there is opportunity for archival research to expand existing historical scholarship and of establishing English translations of historic work.
! 30Michel
Foucault, The Archeology of Knowledge, trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith (New York: Harper & Row, 1976). pp.23-24.
EPILOGUE
!191
301b. REFERENCES
Association of Contemporary Architects. “Resolution of the Ideological Section of the OSA.” First Conference of the Association of Contemporary Architects. April 25, 1928. Banham, Reyner. Theory and Design in the First Machine Age. London: The Architectural Press, 1960. Benjamin, Walter. The Arcades Project. Translated by Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin. Cambridge & London: Harvard University Press, 1999. Brown, William. American Colossus: The Grain Elevator, 1843 to 1943. New York: Colossal Books, 2010. Brynjolfsson, Erik, & McAfee, Andrew. The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2014. Buck-Morss, Susan. The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1989. Denari, Neil. “Track House, Manhattan Beach, California 1886.” In Pamphlet Architecture no.12 (1987): 46-53. Dunster, David. "Architectural Form." Architectural Review 221, no. 1320 (2007): 36-39. Foster, Hal. "Post–Critical." OCTOBER 139 (Winter 2012): 3-8.! Foucault, Michel. The Archeology of Knowledge. Translated by A. M. Sheridan Smith. New York: Harper & Row, 1976.! Giedion, Sigfried. Bauen in Frankreich, Bauen in Eisen, Bauen in Eisenbeton. Leipzig: Klinkhardt & Biermann, 1928. ———. Building in France, Building in Iron, Building in Ferro-Concrete. Translated by Duncan Berry. Los Angeles: The Getty Center for the History of Art, 1995. Gropius, Walter. "Die Kunst in Industrie und Handel.” Jahrbuch des Deutschen Werkbundes. Jena: Diederichs, 1913.! Hight, Eleanir. Picturing Modernism: Moholy-Nagy and Photography in Weimar Germany. Cambridge & London: MIT Press, 1995. Le Corbusier. Vers une Architecture. Paris: G. Cres, 1923 ———. Towards a New Architecture. Translated by Frederick Etchells. London: The Architectural Press, 1927.! Mack, Michael. "Architecture, Industry and Photography: Excavating German Identity." In Reconstructing Space: Architecture in Recent German Photography, edited by Michael Mack. 6-11. London: AA Publications, 1999. McCarter, Robert. “Escape from the Revolving Door: Architecture and the Machine.” in Pamphlet Architecture no.12 (1987): 6-12. Michelson, Annette. ""Where Is Your Rupture?": Mass Culture and the Gesamtkunstwerk." October 56 (Spring, 1991): 43-63. Mendelsohn, Erich. Amerika: Bilderbuch eines Architeckten. Berlin: Rudolf Mosse Buchverlag, 1926.! Tiedemann, Rolf, and Hermann Schweppenhäuser, eds. Das Passagen-Werk. Vol. 5, Gesammelte Schriften. Berlin: Suhramp Verlag, 1982.
!192
! ! !
! !
! ! !! ! ! !