Architectural Advanced Theories and Postmodernism

Architectural History III: Advanced Theory Grace Inmo Kang Spring 2020

“Learning from books and teachers is like travelling by carriage; the thought goes on ‘but the carriage will serve only while one is on the highroad. He who reaches the end of the highroad will leave the carriage and walk afoot.’” - Johannes Itten

Grace Inmo Kang

Washington University in St. Louis Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts History III: Advanced Theory Instructor: Igor Marjanovic

Preface 1. The Myth of Modernism | Barthes, Tafuri 2. Research Methods in Architectural History | Appadurai, Ockman 3. Postmodernity | Harvey, Jameson, Venturi, Scott-Brown, Izenour 4. Memory/Race/Nation | Trouillot, Wilson 5. Social Space | Lefebvre, Tschumi 6. The Shape of Abstraction | Jones 7. Drawing | Evans, Hadid, Hejduk 8. Feminism | Didaskalou, Reudi, Silverman, Wilson 9. Deconstruction | Derrida, Eisenman, Lieeskind 10. Urbanism | Koolhaas, Sassen, Ungers Postscript Bibliography

Preface

The course, Architectural History III: Advanced Theory led by Igor Marjanović, Ph.D., covers various sociological and theoretical components that influence and are influenced by the field of architecture. We covered topics ranging from deconstruction to feminism, analyzing how the shift in intellectual and cultural realms have influenced not only the visual gesticulations but also the unprecedented comprehension of space and time: the multitude of space and non-linear evaluation of history and the future.

This shift is essentially from modernity to postmodernity; Roland Barthes talks about mythical modernism, incited by the economical and ideological changes resulting from The Industrial Revolution and The French Revolution. The past was outdated and insignificant to the advancement towards a determinate future. Although the epoch of modernity paved ways for capitalism and globalism, the headstrong assumption about the future of precarious political, social, and economic operations quickly dissociated due to social disruptions, global power hostility, and social injustices. The seemingly authentic modernity was unveiled to be a propagandic tool of mystifying political conformity; As Harvey elaborates on this “myth” in The Condition of Postmodernity, “The aestheticization of politics through the production of such all-consuming myths (of which Nazism was but one) was the tragic side of the modernist project that became more and more salient as the Heroic era came crashing to an end in World War II.”1 Unavoidably, the uncertainty of the future and shattered system of reasoning (as Enlightenment proved to be flawed) incited time of postmodernity, an era characterized by its “total acceptance of ephemerality, fragmentation, discontinuity.”2 It was essentially the reaction towards the defects of meta-narratives of time and space. History did not proceed in singular trajectory, neither were we in control of the multiple factors of its unceasing mutilations. Postmodernity, although it never fastened to a determinacy, gave ways to understand the world from multi-narratives; theoretical developments of semiotics and other forms of non-verbal communication

1 2

developments of semiotics and other forms of non-verbal communication gave spotlights to the myth of modernism and our subjectivity in perceiving time and space. Field of urbanism and architecture fused with sociology as it became clear that space was not limited to physical interpretation but consisted psychological and social layers; interdisciplinary investigation of space and time intersected with implications of race, class, and gender, and further construed the sociological fabric of space. How we understand architecture, art, urbanism, politics, science, history, and morality in the currently world is in direct relation to postmodern investigations. We are still in debate of characterizing the contemporary epoch as departure from postmodernism; it is as important to comprehend its influences over the modern phenomenology before defining a new epoch. This book elaborates on each topic that demonstrates the historicity and the effects of the postmodern ideological shift to contemporary implications.

1. David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 2000), 35.

2. Ibid., 44.

1961: East Berlin border guards adding barbed wire to the newly built Berlin Wall

Source: http://weneedfun.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/The-Berlin-Wall-4.jpg

1. Myth of Modernism | Roland Barthes | Myth Today | 1957 In reading Myth Today by Roland Barthes, I agree that myth is a systemized speech that signifies an implicit message onto a signified subject. What is a myth? Maybe we can start off by that question. A myth, according to a popular definition, is a popular belief or tradition that has grown up around something or someone. It is a notion or a characteristic that has firmly implanted itself to the nature of the subject and that the majority of the people who accept the belief as a myth, not self-confirmed but neither in doubt, accept the myth’s dominance in the social, political, psychological, and physical realms. In his writing, Barthes mentions, “Every object in the world can pass from a closed, silent existence to an oral state, open to appropriation by society, for there is no law... which forbids talking about things.”1 A speech, or more specifically a language, therefore is a type of myth as it is a system to assign meanings for the communicator and conceiver – humans. In a way, a myth can be synonymous to a bias, as it is undertaken by a bigger ideological force over the users; the danger to these myths today is that people cannot distinguish self-defined significance from the prescribed ideologies. Being an animal of ego-centric vision is a blessing and a curse; rational evaluations and discovery of the universe eventually are prone to anthropocentric determinations and social constructions – we must stop and think where meanings come from and how personal identifications could have long been the byproducts of socialized notions.

Myth is not defined by its mere representation and physical perception. It is the language we read into it. It is the message that it signifies – the message that the myth wants to signify behind the veil of its representation. One resonating example is the Berlin wall border system. When the boarder was under surveillance by armed guards on both sides, it implanted fear upon the Germans. Although the assemblage of the wall was simplified to border wall, trench, control strip, wired fences, the crossing was nearly impossible.2 Showing public execution and humiliations to the inhabitants who attempted to cross or vandalize the boarder, the German governments implanted the fear onto the boarder. However, some who escaped East Germany by crossing the border overcame the mythical imposition of the wall by taking risks. Infrastructure and architecture have reinforced ideologies throughout history.

By reflecting upon histories such as the Berlin Wall and theories like Barthes’, we need to be keenly aware of what mythology shapes our perception and relation of physical, seemingly

1 2 1. Barthes, Roland. “Myth Today.” Mythologies ( Paris: Les Lettres Nouvelles, 1957), 109.

2. Julia Sonnevend, Stories without Borders: the Berlin Wall and the Making of a Global Iconic Event (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 118.

Exhibition PROPORTIO aims to initiate a contemporary dialogue surrounding the lost knowledge of proportions and sacred geometry.

Source: Ellsworth “Kelly Red, Yellow, Blue”, 1963, Collection, Fondation Marguerite et Aimé Maeght, Sant Paul-de-Vence Cliché Claude Germain, ©Ellsworth kelly

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2. Modern Research | Joan Ockman | Slashed | 2017 “There can be no history without theory. There can be no theory without history. History without theory is just one thing after the other. Theory without history is hubris,” says the author.1 I agree that theory evaluates history through a critical lens, and theory directs architecture in an adjacent manner to the sociological, historical currents of the society.

Therefore, Joan Ockman argues that the clash between theory and history is imperative as those two factors have a symbiotic relationship. However, whether both are viewed separately or related, they are marginalized in the contemporary academic settings due to what the author calls the managerial revolution. Some force has overridden the leading position of theory and history-based academia, not just in architecture, and systemized education so that it would be in production-favored. This is due to the increase in globalization, consumer values and digital media as the academic institutions have succumbed to the capitalist production of a forward-thinking, fruitful product, whether it is through the means of producing skillful architects or publishing recognized research projects.

In the comparison of theory versus research, Ockman describes research as merely a curatorial stage of cataloging and finding existing information as the theory requires criticism of the existing practice, study, and academia in the field. The research relies heavily upon access to resources, patronage, and funding, so it cannot be as autonomous and daring as theories are. It is not to blame the researchers or the academia for a pattern shaped by the economic force and digital, data-oriented society geared towards the future. No matter a research, a theory, or history in architecture, it is never to be isolated, elitist academia as the nature of architecture requires communal interaction and facilitation within the society. After all, theories have often been criticized for the “intellectual hyperinflation” and diverting away from its fundamental, historic function, to build for the sake of life. Therefore, it is inevitable for architectural academia to be caught up in the excitement of technological advancements and “pragmatic problem-solving” expectations.2 I agree with the author that architectural academia has the power to shine light upon the knowledge of the past and defy the contemporary denouncement of them as outdated and useless. The application might be unfunctionalized, but the knowledge must be fused with the practice and teaching of architecture as architecture was never meant to be transformed nor improved by time. Architecture has evolved by the evolution of theories and social expressions of needs. Theory and history can facilitate the shift in academic attitude and free design thinking from the shackles of market-oriented, patronage-favored production mode.

1 1. Ockman, Joan. “Slashed.” e-flux architecture. Accessed January 28, 2020. https://www.e-flux.com/architecture/history-theory/159236/ 2 slashed/.

2. Ibid.

The failure of the Pruitt-Igoe housing project signified insensitive modernist design and “became an illustration for many Postmodern and anti-Modern� texts.8 Image source: Katharine G. Bristol, The Pruitt-Igoe Myth (Journal of Architectural Education, 1991), 163.

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3. Postmodernity | David Harvey | The Condition of Postmodernity | 1990

David Harvey illustrates the chronicle of postmodernism in terms of human psychology, sociopolitical factors, and the evolution of aesthetic expression. He argues for postmodernism being the expression of a shift in perception of space and time, in the “organization of capitalism.”1 To my understanding, the emergence and transformation of capitalism in the world have heavily influenced how people perceive space and time – as the unifying system of capitalism disintegrated feudalism and appeared to establish free market, people embraced ideal social orders and looked towards reaching egalitarian, altruistic society.

Sense of time was unified to look forward to the future, and space was endlessly open for new entrepreneurial opportunities to flourish. If modernism was the biggest shift signifying the change in societal function and sentiment, then what is postmodernism? Harvey states that “postmodernism represents some kind of reaction to, or departure from, modernism.”2 Modernism thrived on “the belief in linear progress, absolute truths, the rational planning of ideal social orders, and the standardization of knowledge and production.”3 It embraced inevitable changes to achieve new governing social standards that would carry eternal and immutable values, the fine balance between “practical reasoning (moral judgment) and understanding (scientific knowledge).”4 However, the artistic and philosophical expressions of this new vision gave them social and political roles and oscillated on the political spectrum; examples are Heidegger and the “anesthetization of politics” and means of production of propaganda.5 After the WWI and WWII and 1968, it was clear that the world could not be controlled by meta-solutions and representations.

The cumulation of distrusting sentiments of the society gave birth to postmodernism and many forms of its expressions in the fields of art, architecture, and social movements. To me, the description that Harvey gives to the transitions to enlightenment, modernism and postmodernism all reverberate a similar, inherent characteristic of the world wanting changes to a defective society. To Jonathan Raban, the author of Soft City, “the city... is much too complicated a place ever to be so disciplined… [and] is somewhere where fact and imagination simply have to fuse.”6 As the way Raban describes the modernist city, couldn’t the current society be described similarly, too? If so, the lesson we can learn from our history is to not repeat the same mistake – we need to admit the systems are faulted but it needs to be monitored by the public conscience and democracy to ensure it does not fall into “totalitarian nightmare.”7

1. David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 2000), vii.

2. Ibid., 7.

3. Ibid., 9.

4. Ibid., 19.

5. Ibid., 35.

6. Ibid., 5.

7. Ibid., 6.

8. Katharine G. Bristol, The Pruitt-Igoe Myth (Journal of Architectural Education, 1991), 169.

Stowage of the British slave ship ‘Brookes’ under the Regulated Slave Trade Act of 1788.

Keenan, Thomas. (2018). Getting the dead to tell me what happened: Justice, Prosopopoeia, and Forensic Afterlives. Kronos. 44.

10.17159/2309-9585/2018/v44a7.

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4. Memory Race Nation | Mabel O. Wilson | Carceral Architectures The challenges to designers’ social responsibilities that Mabel O. Wilson addresses in her article are not easy and comfortable concepts to all designers. Deconstructing the perpetual violence and racialized ideologies in the modern industrial complexes may not be the most appealing for many reasons – shameful history is rarely dealt with enthusiasm, especially by those who do not share heritage of oppression or do not connect professionalism and morality. Moreover, the future-oriented drive of architectural industry and education of formal inventiveness, often glamorized by technological advancement, divert designers, students, and audience from the socio-ontological history of oppressive architecture and its perpetuality of racial injustice in the complex web of “modern planning, development policy, and neoliberal economics.”1 Maybe this is what Wilson implies when mentioning the “gap in understanding incarceration’s impact on black and Hispanic Americans” and “[in] architecture’s own genealogy in racialized modern discourses of history and science.”2 We designers are global citizens living in the era of “ontological trialectic of spatiality-socialityhistoricality,” a three-way interdependent way of understanding the world.3 As designers, we carry the tool to actively transcribe and shape spaces that narrate truthful social and historical phenomena. One may argue that designers take on a passive role in the operation of the built space as opposed to the power of the industries and the clients. However, I believe that designers have more power to expose the modern practice of racialized criminalization through an active scrutinization and resistance of the “racialized apparatus of modern incarceration, a typology of captivity and violence.”4 Understanding the physical typology of violence is needed first, especially in proper education, and then comes having the moral conscience to prevent profit-making through designing spaces for incarcerated labor-abuse and privatization of prisons. In its history, America still practiced chattel slavery despite the hypocrisy in establishing constitutional democracy emphasized on “self-determination and natural rights.”5 Even after the abolition, de facto and de jure racial segregations have put “Europe’s Others” in disadvantageous position in access to resources and rights; because of the history of what Jefferson describes as “deep rooted prejudices entertained by the whites,” humanity is still yet to alleviate racism deeply rooted in geography, “biology, anthropology, sociology,” architectural theory, economy, politics, social welfare, and prison system.6 Yet, it is imperative to reframe where architects and designers stand in between personal design pursuits and making the physical expressions of systems. Through reading the example of “Angola prison,” it’s clear that architecture is effective in perpetuating racialized ideologies deceptively.7 But, we as architects need to work the other way around - to recognize the historical and social significances in built environments and architectural typologies to combat off the violent ideologies perpetuated through them.

1. Mabel O. Wilson, “Carceral Architectures,” e-flux architecture, accessed February 11, 2020, https://www.e-flux.com/architecture/superhumanity/68676/carceral-architectures/) 2. Ibid.

3. Alan Read and Edward W. Soja, “Orienting,” in Architecturally Speaking: Practice of Art, Architecture, and the Everyday (London, UK: Routledge, 2000), p. 14)and means of production of propaganda.8 After the WWI and WWII and tion of politics” 4. Mabel O. Wilson, “Carceral Architectures,” e-flux architecture, accessed February 11, 2020, https://www.e-flux.com/architecture/superhumanity/68676/carceral-architectures/) 5. Ibid.

6. Ibid.

7. Ibid.

2.

Advertisement for Architecture : The first in a series of vignettes by Bernard Tschumi

Bernard Tschumi, Architectural Manifestoes (London: Architectural Association, 1979))

5. Social Space | Bernard Tschumi | Architectural Manifestoes |1979 Bernard Tschumi argues in Architectural Manifestoes that “architecture will be defined as the convergence of objects, events and places. Such convergence intensifies, reinforces, and accelerates.”1 Architecture cannot simply define certain activities and functions of the space, but rather the space is articulated by the mercurial events and desires, “superimposed by the viewer’s fantasies.”2 So how do the allegories of screenplays and scripts to architecture commentate on its reinforcing of revolutionary nature? Tschumi’s arguments can be sufficed through further symbolisms. First, architecture both operations in imports and exports of knowledge of the time. It’s agreeable that architectural functions, no matter how intensely imprinted on the plan drawings and planning schemes, are not immutable to the forces of incoming ideas and cultures that are bore on the minds of the users. The functions of the infrastructures change over time due to different demands and audiences; for example, Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, Italy was designed to house their royal Medici family but eventually converted into a city commune. We feel this sentiment whenever we look at an old Roman city plan and wonder, what ideas and social changes have caused the urban fabrics to shift so much?

Tschumi’s architectural strife is to generate “new types of architectural notation” that would accentuate the expressions of actions taking place within.3 Drawings are only the representations of real places and buildings; in order to illustrate the real experiences and episodes in the architecture, the architectural notations should be challenged to encompass attitude, emotions, and movements. This desire is further expressed through the allegory of border crossing. For his project, The Manhattan Transcript, Tschumi draws sequences of “spaces of sensations, spaces of desire, spaces of negation.”4 He draws emphasis on the transitional borders between those spaces, and he further defines architecture as the “forbidden space between dream and reality, acceptance and rejection, reason and madness.

Standing on the border becomes the ultimate pleasure.”5 What does this space of border, margin connote to the ambiguous space of architecture giving agency to revolutions and resistance? Social critic, Bell Hooks writes in her book Yearning: Race, Gender and Cultural Politics, “I am located in the margin… [that] one chooses as site of resistance…

This site of resistance is continually formed in that segregated culture of opposition that is our critical response to domination. We come to this space through suffering and pain, through struggle.”6 Tschumi would agree with Hook’s identification of the psychological margin as a physical space. Architecture always provides spaces of expression, emotion, and sensation. Within it, we can come in solidarity to resist the prescribed social orders and their exploitations.

1. Bernard Tschumi, Architectural Manifestoes (London: Architectural Association, 1979)) 2. Ibid.

3. Ibid.

4. Ibid.

5. Ibid.

6. Bell Hooks, Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics (New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2015), p.153)

1 2 3 4

Untitled, c.1940s by Norman Lewis. He was one of the first African American artists to experiment with abstract expressionism.

Picture taken during a visit to Saint Louis Art Museum exhibition, “The Shape of Exhibition”

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6. The Shape of Abstraction | Kellie Jones It’s Not Enough to Say “Black is Beautiful” | 2006 ‘It’s not enough to say “Black is Beautiful”’ is a completely valid statement applicable even to our contemporary understanding of the history of African diaspora and of African American heritage. Abstract artist Frank Bowling strived to define what the African artists needed to demand in order to represent “a wide-ranging, global, diasporic experience – provided the locus where an active and ever-changing aesthetics could reside.”1 For him, concretizing a universal definition of “Black Art” that possesses backgrounds in tribal art or “images of black rage abounded” was meaningless because conceding to Western expectations nor the bombarding of kitsch images of local Black experience onto the established art world would never satisfy the bigger pursuit of the African diaspora.2 He uses the term, “double-entendre,” a repetition of different meanings, to describe the unique universal Black experience.

Therefore, it’s not enough to say “Black is Beautiful” as it is a monocular systemization of Black aesthetics, prone to being misconstrued by White tokenism, especially in gallery representations. Instead, the double entendre coincides with the determinations of the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition (BECC) demands towards the Whitney museum with the changing sociopolitical climate and of the artist individuals who have refused to cooperate with museum institutions’ lack of curatorial, culturally-sensitive approach to art exhibitions.

Moreover, the sentiment towards the need for improved expectations in art fields resonated with the artists’ work that “used non-objective and representational mark-making to address emotional and political concerns.”3 This was also to awaken new discourses in the museum institutions, curators, and the audience. The bringing of curatorial and scholarly standards to liberate black art have been in need of equally responsible contribution from every party - the museum, critics, audience, and the artists, even to this day. Although galleries like the Whitney were criticized for under-representing African American artists, “[conforming] to the way people were treated in a segregated society,” its active response to black artist activism acknowledged their contributions to the abstract art scene.4 Inquiries such as “How did critics respond to the co-mingling of protest race and aesthetics in the exhibitions and in the works themselves?” and “What should a radical black aesthetic look like, how should it function?” were critical to pinpointing what needs to be worked on to achieve a universal African diasporic art movement and representation.5 Black artists struggled in the 60’s and beyond to not only be recognized artistically but also contextually, as “there was no real expertise… that could provide an avenue to conceptualize how black artists were at once part of, and still working in ways different from, western canonical modes.”6 Therefore, the collaboration of democratic contributions of the museum, critic, and the audience to representing Black art is in need to this day.

1. Kellie Jones, Imamu Amiri Baraka, “It’s Not Enough to Say “Black is Beautiful: Abstraction at the Whitney,” in EyeMinded: Living and Writing Contemporary Art (2006), 176.

2. Ibid., 173.

3. Ibid., 167. Kellie Jones, Imamu Amiri Baraka, “It’s Not Enough to Say “Black is Beautiful: Abstraction 4.

157. at Ibid., the Whitney,” in EyeMinded: Living and Writing Contemporary Art (1969-1974), 176.

5. Ibid., 158.

6. Ibid., 175. Ibid., 173.

1 2 3 4

Ibid., 167.

Ibid., 157.

Conceptual diagram of interdisciplinary exchange of structural possibilities.

Jesse Reiser and Nanako Umemoto, Atlas of Novel Tectonics (New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press, 2005), 130-131.

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7. Drawing | Robin Evans | Translations from Drawing to Building | 1986

Civilizations developed languages to communicate and to establish communal systems.

According to Evans, architectural drawing is synonymous to a language for the same purpose: to express and to elaborate upon ideas, ubiquitous to comprehension. Despite its infidelity of losing essence during translating architectural ideas or potentially expressing new ideas exclusive to the medium of two dimensional representation, drawing is an indispensable medium for architects to elaborate upon their imagination and to make discoveries of the final details or the broader mysteries. Drawing is a medium, a method, a formula, that facilitates the process of development.

However, it is importantly to not prescribe functions of architecture back to its representational surfaces. Indeed, architecture is an object of enigma as its formal and formulaic logics cannot predict its social, economic, and political roles, at least in the long run. Moreover, some qualities of a space cannot be achieved merely through orthographic drawings; for example, the atmospheric achievements of James Turrell’s localized neon light installations.1 Nevertheless, It’s important to recognize the expectation and limitation we have established in representations of formal, tangible elements and abstract, experiential presence. An example is how the renaissance painters still depicted “pithy irregularities of naturalism,” while combing through the precise uses of perspectival construction in terms of spatial representation.2 Evans continues to characterize architecture as being “brought into existence through drawing,” not necessarily by preexisting force, such as nature; he defines this principle as “reversed directionality.”3 Therefore, architectural drawing possesses a generative power beyond mere utilization of orthography or even the understanding of what space is. It once served as the machinery to apply perspective understanding onto architectural forms, making “the same species of illusion as is to be found in drawing.”4 Then the representational entity became more projective of discoveries and imaginations, that it “did not need to imprison forms within orthography.” Evans describes de l’Orme’s work on the dome of the Royal Chapel as determined “projectively” instead of “metrically.”5 Evans argues that architecture needs to fight off the essentialist doctrine of which architecture’s “both meaning and likeness are transported from idea through drawing to building with minimum loss.”6 The contemporary designers still hold that “the shifting paradigm is simply yet another shift in discourse, [and] it doesn’t affect the object,” says the Metabolist architects Reiser and Umemoto.7 Especially for our times where there are innumerable shifts in social, political, scientific, and aesthetic discourses, the potency of architectural drawing to liberate architecture from formal conformity of shape, propriety and essence is direly needed.

1 2 Robin Evans, Translations from Drawing to Building (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1. James Turrell and Elizabeth Gerber, James Turrell: a Retrospective (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2013).

1997), 5.

2. Robin Evans, Translations from Drawing to Building (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997), 5.

3 Ibid., 7.

4. Ibid., 8.

5. Ibid., 11.

4 Ibid., 8.

6. Ibid., 14.

7. Jesse Reiser and Nanako Umemoto, Atlas of Novel Tectonics (New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press, 2005), 24.

5 Ibid., 11.

3. Ibid., 7.

The Cradle, Berthe Morisot 1872. Whilst her peer male impressionist painters like Manet and Degas depicted scenes of bars and brothels, female artists like Morisot painted domestic scenes as their public visibility and exposure were comparatively restricted to women.

JOSEPHINE BIND, BERTHE MORISOT (S.l.: KEONEMANN, 2020))

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8. Feminism | Elizabeth Wilson | The Sphinx In The City | 1991

Female sexuality was inconsistently denounced as an uncontrolled disorder that caused collateral damages to the city and was “breaking down the rigid distinctions between the classes.”1 Certainly, it is impetuous to witch-huntingly assign a linear cause between prostitution and political revolutions. As the author says, “Paris was the crucible both of sexual freedom and of political revolution, the link that joined them was the female form,” it is evident that the struggle for sexual expressions and equality were aligned with the same democratic sentiments of the middle class.2 However, because the female image was the subject matter of pleasure that admittingly fueled the city with excitement, it was in most part devoid of real power. Women were often romanticized as abstract values such as “Victory, Justice, France herself ” and objectified in advertisements of “cigarettes and railway travel.”3 On the other hand, in the workforces, women were continuously overlooked and were the victims of social ambiguity, forming indeterminate class.

The sexualized spectacles of Paris gave birth to booming prostitution, homosexual culture and other forms of anonymous identity, and they staged for a new urban culture as industrialization and commercialization incurred. Paris was a city of anonymous urban life, not just of the night lives, art scenes, and debaucheries, but also of the emerging bourgeoisie lifestyle. Through culture of consumerism, the middle classed longed to imitate the private, yet ostentatious lifestyle of the aristocrats. At the rise of industrialization and consumerism of the bourgeoisies in Paris, presence of women in department stores and hotels installed ambiguous spaces in Paris. “There, women looked, as well as being looked at.”4 The commodification of beauty and service promised an image of luxury to the bourgeoisies, especially to the females, yet it was the very presence of woman consumers and shopworkers that was exploited to attract pleasurable consumerism. As the author, Elizabeth Wilson, states, “[Paris] was inescapably female,” it was the objectification and symbolism of women that has defined the modernity of Paris, villainized prostitution and ambiguous, coarse urbanity, sustained consumerism, and granted freedom of expression to genders and sexualities. 5 Social ambiguity, poverty, disproportionately gendered workforces, and the inseparable “female” character of Paris all contributed to a prolonged fight to gain gender equality and suffrage. Paris relied upon the sexual female energy to fuel the city with pleasure, passion, and money. Therefore, representation of female sexuality was a double-edged sword as it objectified women, but it also granted freedom of expression to feminist writers, artists, and the gay and lesbian subcultures. “A sexualization of the spectacle of all aspects of life both degraded women and sometimes offered them the escape of wealth and the freedom of depravity.”6 Maybe it was through such struggle that has paved ways for not only women but also the marginal communities of today.

1. Elizabeth Wilson, The Sphinx in the City Urban Life, the Control of Disorder, and Women (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1992), 50.

Elizabeth Wilson, The Sphinx in the City Urban Life, the Control of Disorder, and Women 2. Ibid., 48.

3.

Ibid., 48-49.CA: University of California Press, 1992)) (Berkeley, 4. Ibid., 60.

5. Ibid., 47.

Ibid., 48.

6. Ibid., 61.

1 2 3

Ibid., 48-49.

FIN d’OU T HOU S, Peter Eisenman 1983

https://eisenmanarchitects.com/Fin-D-Ou-T-Hou-S-1983

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9. Deconstruction | Peter Eisenman | FIN d’OU T HOU S | 1983 The well-known saying, “form follows function,” is coined by Louis Sullivan, a father figure in modern skyscraper architecture.1 Architecture has been historically elevated as a medium for divine artistic expression, distilling architects of religious buildings and historical monuments worthy nobility and genius. Architecture, therefore, was celebrated to materialize spiritual orders, grandiosity of the divinity, or the monumentality of imperial conquests. The architecture symbolized a bigger meaning and order, and they were to be communicated to the viewers through visual means. Modernist figure like Sullivan critiqued this esoteric proposition and condemned it unfit for their contemporary era in the twentieth century when the world wars occurred and understanding of history, production, social structure, and science transformed due to technological advancement, globalism, and rise of democracy.

For the modernist, form and function coexisted, because that was the nature’s rule. Louis Sullivan stated in his book, “It is the prevailing law of all things organic, and inorganic, of all things physical and metaphysical, of all things human and all things superhuman, of all true manifestations of the head, of the heart, of the soul, that the life is recognizable in its expression, that form ever follows function. This is the law.”2 As the form of things in nature was linked to its functions, he believed the design of architecture, especially that of skyscrapers, needed to express its structural integrity and its administrative function.

Peter Eisenman wanted to switch the modernist proposition that form determined architectural function. For him, architecture was not an end-product nor an object with assigned functionality. For him, “Fin d’Ou T Hou s suggests that the architectural object must become internalized so that its value lies in its own processes.”3 His rule of formal composition was to give space to myriad and illusive possibilities of uses, forms, and interpretation. It is clear that Jacques Derrida’s deconstructivist writing influenced Eisenman’s search for the structural language, as his “conclusion [was] that the experience of architecture was in its essence reading and that the practice of architecture is a writing in a sovereign language.”4 Like reading, a subjective understanding of words and notions, understanding architecture cannot never be fully decoded, as its impression constantly changes; same for writing, architecture is subject to the act of reading, no matter how much certain ideology and functionality have been imposed upon its creation. Eisenman’s design suffered through various criticism as they were deemed uninhabitable and inconsiderate to the user comfort.

Nevertheless, his design theories opened ways for his future generations of designers as they were prompted to think the non-metanarrative approach to reading architecture and reversely exploit architecture to exist in between the form-driven episteme and evaluation of its subjective, illusive functions.

1 Louis H. Sullivan, Kindergarten Chats and Other Writings (New York: Wittenborn, Schultz, 1947), 208) 1.

Louis H. Sullivan, Kindergarten Chats and Other Writings (New York: Wittenborn, Schultz, 1947), 208.

2 Ibid.

2. Ibid.

3.

Nina Hofer, and Jeffrey Kipnis, Fin DOu THofer, Hou S (London: Architectural Association, 1985), 3.Fin DOu T 3 Peter Eisenman,Peter Eisenman, Nina and Jeffrey Kipnis, 4. Ibid., 16.

Hou S (London: Architectural Association, 1985), 3) 4 Ibid., 16.

R. Fagnoni’s project for the improvement of S.Croce, Florece (1930).

The gardens “giardini” are scattered mostly as closed off, private territories, antithecal to Unger and Koolhaas’s idea of “green grid.”

Silvano Fei et al., Firenze: Profilo Di Storia Urbana = Florence: an Outline of Urban History (Firenze: Alinea, 1995), 166.

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10. Urbanism | Oswald Ungers and Rem Koolhaas | The City in the City: Berlin: A Green Archipelago | 1977 In Unger and Koolhaas’s writing of The City in the City in 1977, they employedwhat radical vision in urban antidote for declining metropolis, using expressions like “deflation,” “weedout,” and “intensify… the fragments.”1 It could be misread without further elaboration, especially considering the political climate of the Cold War already having had a hiatus in the unban culture and socioeconomic sequence of Berlin. Nevertheless, their vision in urbanity did not originate from mal-intention of social dissension and gaps but from the efficiency of the urban model of green archipelago. Unger and Koolhaas was undoubtedly aware of the sociopolitical climate of the city; they labeled Berlin as “a city in retrenchment” because of its problems of urban density and inefficient use of uncared infrastructures.2 In order to restore the city’s vitality and engage people, Berlin needed to adopt an urban planning model of archipelago that pushed for “minimal architectural expenditure [with] maximum social benefits.”3 By disseminating inefficient buildings and properties to the rudimentary ground of green grid, the city would be able to accommodate ecological and urban needs through inviting suburbs, wildparks, and forest and absorb ubiquitous typologies such as markets, banks, and churches. Urban intervention or urban repair cannot be a static definition, as they need to accommodate the contemporary and civic needs. Gestures of new horizontal and vertical propagations of residential and commercial buildings are not only a risk a city is taking in attempt to attract population blindly, they perpetuated inequality problem in land ownership, zoning regulation, and social gaps. Rather, architectural interventions (not just entailing new constructions but also deflation and repurposing) of urban restoration, enclave mobility, and complimentary facilities will better serve a city’s preservation of history and encouragement of its democratic use.

An interesting comparison of urban development under totalitarianism exist with the 20th century urban renewal plans of Florence, Italy under its fascist reign. In the book, Firenze: Outline of Urban History, the authors describe the urban renewal efforts of the municipality of Florence between 1930 and 1940 as blind to social issues and “had little to do with the neighborhoods’ need.”4 They continue to give examples of Manifattura Tabacchi (tobacco factory) and Scuola di Guerra Aerea (air warfare school) that were built on open green spaces rather than occupying unused buildings, “eroding and impoverishing them.”5 The first half of 20th century for Fascist Italy was certainly the time of race for political propaganda through curbing away from classical architecture and expediting service sector complexes and promoting real estate interests. However, the city of Florence had to face density issue of human population and green spaces for the same consequence as Berlin’s history of superficial urban revival planning. From these two precedents, we must learn how to discern and solve the consequences from such time in the modern urbanity.

1. O. M. Ungers et al., The City in the City: Berlin: a Green Archipelago: a Manifesto (1977) (Lars Müller Publishers, 2013), 12.

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid., 16.

4. Silvano Fei et al., Firenze: Profilo Di Storia Urbana = Florence: an Outline of Urban History (Firenze: Alinea, 1995), 162.

5. Ibid., 165.

1 2 O. M. Ungers et al., The City in the City: Ber-

lin: a Green Archipelago: a Manifesto (1977) (Lars Müller Publishers, 2013))

Postscript

As we reflect on our time of ever-advancing technology and science, data-operating network of power, yet of unprecedented implications of environmental, ethical, and political consequences, how do we define the current social direction and the position of architecture within it? As Frederic Jameson describes postmodernism to be a “cultural logic” of Late Capitalism, our contemporary neoliberal society constructs a complex system where the practice of architecture is diversified but simultaneously chained to its financial implications.1 The field of architectural practice or research has become globalized and tight-knit, but also very competitive, structured, and commodified; the architecture market highly depends on the profit model; the supply of architecture students and practitioners are higher than the demand in the market (as demand fluctuates uncertainly to the rhythm of global economy,) so we are often undervalued when it comes to traditional owner-architectcontractor hierarchy. When we wish to become academics in scholarly settings, we face difficulties in paying off student loans and accommodating to general academic interests to achieve professorships. If postmodernism was about fragmentation and multiplicity, encouraging architects to be craftsmen, activists, and intellectuals, the contemporary society has muted the roles of designers under complex capitalist network. In relation to space and time, I dare to say that we are in a “static” state of uncertainty and that we are even more blinded by the mythologies than the times of modernism.

The society has established new rules of scientific rationality and “enlightenments” to head towards unceasing technological developments and economic superpower. It has often prioritized capital over environment and equity. We are more than aware that this trend will not benefit everyone and that we are in a defective system; yet, we are caught deep in the labor of the system – working, spending, saving (less than needed) and are distracted from the fact that we are heading towards a questionable future, for both the people and mother earth.

1

How we define the future depends on us. Postmodernism might have celebrated the uncertainty of the future and denounced meta-narratives.

Nevertheless, right now is not for the same type of celebration. It is the time for the warning and preparation for the uncertainty, as the global world projects to face more dire, complex, and novel challenges regarding political hostility, human rights oppression, transnational economic inequality, global warming, and more. The time ahead will depend on our doing, and the future will only exist in our considerations. Surely, there are multiple narratives to the future, whether we can control or not. The coronavirus pandemic of this year has absolutely put us into perspectives of what uncertainty the future holds. However, even within the oeuvre of the world, our decisions hold great power in writing history, and our awareness as global citizens must be raised to be critical in our social status and professions.

We need to not only project onto the future but also look back to the past; what history needs revisiting to grant justice and truth to our generation?

What history should we look back to adopt or to not repeat? Our public conscience and clean democracy will grow when we look critical back to shameful history such as that of slavery - we can observe its traces perpetuated in the prison system and even in the architectural typology of solitary confinement. As architects, we must be aware of the sociological implications in the existing and new typologies to do our civic duties.

Reading about social spaces tackled by Henri Lefebvre, Bernard Tshumi, Edward Soja, Michael Foucault, and more, I imagine new architecture to be more critical and revolutionary about its invisible powers.

According to Bernard Tschumi, revolutionary social spaces are “forbidden space between dream and reality, acceptance and rejection, reason and madness. Standing on the border becomes the ultimate pleasure.”2 What does this space of border connote to the new social role of architecture giving agency to revolutions and change in perceptions? With the dialogue of intertwined, complex history, it is time to actively engage in that space of margin; the space of margin is where the “Thirdspace” exists and where the physical and psychological realms collide and contradict.3 It is the space where we create culture, community, emotions, values, and memories.

To study architecture is to study why it is not a passive entity but an active facilitator or a compliance making the fabric of the city and lived experiences.

1. Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (London: Verso, 1991).

2. Bernard Tschumi, Architectural Manifestoes (London: Architectural Association, 1979).

3. Alan Read and Edward W. Soja, “Orienting,” in Architecturally Speaking: Practice of Art, Architecture, and the Everyday (London, UK: Routledge, 2000), p. 14)

Bibliography

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Thank you for reading.