' PANIC IN THE YEAR ZERO '
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ARCHITECTURE UNDER DURESS : MODERNITY: T HE QUESTION OF RE VISION ISM OR RECON TE XTUA LIZA TI ON ERIC KAHN
THREE REM L.'mERS T O ARC HITECTS
LIFE MAGAZINE 1271 Avenue of the Ame ricas New Yor~, New York. 10020
To:
Fr: R• .
1795
Edi tor Central Oftlce of Architecture LI FE The 1994 Amencan Dream House: A House lor All America-June 1994 issue
Just because (aSfe IS al ways concerned w i th form, and never with con tenr. it f inally induces in the mind <I dangerous tendency to neg/eer rea/ily altogether, and to
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AboV6: C6ntfal OffiC6 of Archil6crure, Ready Made (rec rifie) vers ion no. 2- 1994, photomontage and ink, 15cmJ(23cm
sacrifice truth and morali ty to the alluring dress in which they appear. All SUbs/8ntial difference
between thin gs is lost, and
appearance a/O(l8 determ in es their worth .
-Friedrich Schiller, On the Aesthet ic Education of Man 1900
The dream is the /disguised} fulfillment of a (suppressed,
repressed! counter-wish. -Sigmund Freu d, The Interpretation of Dreams 1954
The stsrk snd frighren ing realities of our world Will not be softened by dress ing rhem up w i th the Wn ew look, wand it Will be equally futile to try to humanize our mechanized civiliza tion by adding sent im ental fripperies to our homes. But If the human factor is becoming more and more dominant In our work, architecture Will reveal rhe emotion al quahries of th e des igner in fhe very bones of the b uildings, not in rhe rrimmings only; it w ill be the result of bOfh good service and good leade rship. -Walter Gropius
1986
The American Imagination demands the realthmg, and, to atrain i f, must fabrica te the absolu te fake .. .for historical m forma tlOn fO be absorbed, it has to assume the aspect of reincarna tion .. The ~completely real ~ becomes identi fied With the "comp le tely fake . - Absolu te unreali ty is offered as real presence ... -Umberto Eco. Travels In Hyper-rea lity
1991
Don ' r believe the hype ... -PubliC Enemy
o
'Pamc
In
the Year Zero'
When Anstotle began an mqulry mlO a profound subJect, with the mtent to produce a crf\lque, he commenced hiS treatise With an apologia, and requested that the reader annbute the author's Inqulnes not to presumption or affogance, as If he were mterfermg With thmgs of which he had little or no knowledge, but rather to the reader's moral sense and desire to discover and establish lIue doc trines, as far as lay within the potential of human mtellect.
I write you not as an embattled defender' of modern architecture?, nor as a bitter academic who is more intent on providing justifications for himself by attacking an alternate se t of cultul al and architectulal values1 . My purpose is more severe. This letter has grown ou t of a personal conviction that much of the international debate about the tenability of cultural modernity starts from presuppositions that must be fundamentally recontextualized in orde r to move through the pervasive contemporary condition of evaSive, ongOing nihilism and cultural decadence. Although It IS outside the scope of this letter to strategize an operating navigatIOnal course through modernity Itself, I would like to put forth a provISional ground vis-a-vIS a series of Interconnections of phenomena/crltlcat theones from whICh we can locate a set of reference points. Once established, I can use these POintS to address the Implications against modernity as stated Ithrough radical re Visionism] in your article. My cn tlQue responds to and only to the speci fics embodied Within the article. I profess no mSlde know ledge [nor do I care to have anY1 regarding the Faustian agreement between the featured architect and Life magazine. The overall intention of this letter is to situa te RObert Stern' as the preeminent representative rev l Slonlst~ within the torren t of contemporary architectural culture through a discussion encompassing both 'reflective' cn tical theory and biblical allegory . For terminological purposes I Will use the term 'degraded tate modernity' as used by 'recontextualists' of modernity who search for continuity w it h the modern through a redemptive crf\ique, and the term posUMlodelism Will designate the CflSIS-baSed Cfll!que used by 'reVISionists' of modernity. I do thiS out of deference to the reader who understarlds the term posUMJodern as defining a broad spectrum of cultural spheres larld therefOfe must accept a labyrinthine disperSion of interpretations fraught With antinomies1. t prefer to use Lyotard's, rather narrow definition of th e post[M[odern Simply as Wd,strust of metanarratlves." J employ degraded late modernity to emphaSize nontotalIZIng contmulty w!lh,n the modern prolect . The author IS acutely aware of the problems associated With attempting to periodlze h,stollcal thought In simplistic dualistiC and oppoSitional terms, which automatically categoflze man/Woman, supeflor/infenor In favor of a nuanced and potentially more tragic and diachroniC accounUsl of hlstorhes1. In the face of the h,stonQgraphical violence perpetrated by the conservative
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rhetoric of the reVisionist, everyday life contingent, the recontextualist critiQue 'uncouples' abstraction and ideology from the apparatus of institut ionalized modes of authority as a [re1enlightened redemp tive critique which incorporates true multicultura l conduits for [01ther voices. The reader wilt see that. I am especially hesitant as an architect. to accept self-teferen tial posUM]odern as a pervasive force which describe s every part of cul ture as swerving off in the same direCtion at approximately the same l ime. More often than not, we wan t the best from Incompatible versions of the world historyhs1 and, as a result. we get nothing . Finally, I am aware that many of the points/questions I present could be Independent essays, and so I ask for patience from the reader as to the number of sources and Ideas that have been brought to the fore . If one assumes that architectural theory has substance only to the degree that it reflects or embodies the historical development of it's subJect/ project. a reading of ItS current status may be useful to sketch . However proviSionally, th iS can clarify which cri tical theory may be employed as a proactive form of cultural reSistance. But such activity requ ires critella, and those can only be furnished by speculative theory. Con temporary critical theory', after the end of theory, is an open-ended and dialectical mode of enquiry. Its goal IS to prOVISionally cons trUCt critefla which allows for emanCipation and enlightenment in the agents who hold them [Raymond Geuss). The abstractness of theory formation IS often matched only by the blind concret eness of Individual architectural Interpretations. And, for th iS reason, It is usefu l to critiQue, through the use of clltical theory, speCific works to expose the curr ent CflSIS In the production of architecture. I begin by asking, In 1994, how could a proposal such as Stern's come forth? Herein lies the present undertaking. Your suggesl/on that Robert A.M . Stern'S 1994 LIFE MagaZine Dream House In any way serves as a tenable contemporary model of 'domesticIty' IS highly problematiC. Flfst of all, the sweeping opening Statements on the cover ILlFE: June 1994 Issue) rely on a rhetorIC of hypnotIC and libidinal persuasion which IS anything bu t Innocent. He [Stern] IS not 'great", nor IS the house 'claSSIC" or 'remarkable' It would not SUit my 'family'. nor can one or should one be able to bUild a house 'anywhere' With adaptations -by almost any archit ect" [p. 831 Con temporary cntlcal discourse warns against such categoflcal procJamatlons, yet to enter into this cfl tique I find it necessary to refute continued on page 8