"Mom Can We Dive at the Nave" and Other Issues of Architectural Identity

Mom can we dive at the nave?

And other issues of architectural identity

Ujal Gorchu

INTRODUCTION Where does the architectural identity reside?

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capable of succeeding, evolving and often failing, just as humans do. Can those ideals really reside in the architectural typologies of brick and mortar and be universally perceived or is it just another set of semantic games that we play in order to create something that “surpasses us”. Do churches and cathedrals really bring us closer to the divine and is this spiritual goal “If buildings can act as a repository of our ideals, it is be- the sole reason churches look the way they do? cause they can be purged of all infelicities that corrode Some people would argue that we as architects creordinary lives. A great work of architecture will speak to us of degree of serenity, strength, poise and grace ate objects and spaces that genuinely reflect the ideals to which we, both as creators and audiences, typically we believe in often at the cost of our physical comfort. cannot do justice- and it will for this very reason beguile In Peter Eisenman talks about the often oversimplified and move us. Architecture excites our respect to the ex- relationship between our never ending pursuit of idealistic values and the immediate pragmatic function. tent it surpasses us.”1 hat do we mean when we say that buildings should speak for themselves? How do we even start measuring the legitimacy of that claim? What are buildings supposed to talk about anyway? In his book Architecture of Happiness Alain de Botton argues that:

But if buildings are supposed to talk about the ide- “The various theories of architecture which properly can alistic set of values embedded in them how does that be called “humanist” are characterized by a dialectical correlate with our vision of buildings as living entities opposition: an oscillation between a concern for internal

accommodation-the program and the way it is materialized-and a concern for articulation of ideal themes in form-for example, as manifested in the configurational significance of the plan. These concerns were understood as two poles of a single, continuous experience.

Within pre-industrial, humanist practice, a balance between them could be maintained because both type and function were invested with idealist views of man’s relationship to his object world.” 2 Eisenman argues that after the rise of industrialization that balance was impossible to maintain since the programmatic requirements became too complex.

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Within preindustrial, humanist practice, a balance between them could be maintained because both type and function were invested with idealist views of man’s relationship to his object world.

“And as the functions became more complex, the ability to manifest the pure typeform eroded… Thus, in the nineteenth century, and continuing on into the twentieth, as the program grew in complexity, the typeform became diminished as a realizable concern.” 3 In his book The Architecture of the City Aldo Rossi writes; “In almost all European cities there are large palaces, building complexes or agglomerations that constitute whole pieces of the city, and whose function is no longer the original one. When one visits a monument of this type… one is struck by multiplicity of different functions that a building of this type can contain over time and how these functions are entirely independent of the form. At the same time, it is precisely the form that impresses us; we live it and experience it, and in turn it structures the city.”4

The relationship Rossi talks about is significantly more complex than form follows function or vice versa. These relationships change over time; sometimes gradually as result of steady evolution in mindset of users or a rapid change that may be a result of religious or political changes, shifts in paradigms, wars and other similar conditions. This shifts in perception of the building may be best understood under the framework of primary and secondary functions. If we consider the primary function to be the more utilitarian one and the secondary one to be the symbolic meaning we assign to objects the we can observe how these things overlap or grow apart throughout a given phase. Uberto Eco talking about denotative (primary) and connotative (secondary) functions of architecture made it clear that architecture does not only function but it also communicates and this communication happens in the semiotic terrain. Everything from the primitive caves to Gothic cathedrals are subject to semiotic analysis. However this analysis has a temporal dimension as non of the functions or symbolic mean-

ings we attach to objects are static and are hugely influenced by perception and constructed narratives around them.

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Architect’s operation as possibly a matter of ‘facing’ the likelihood of his work being subject to a variety of readings, to the vicissitudes of communication, by designing for variable primary functions and open secondary functions.

“Architectural signs as denotative and connotative according to codes, the codes and sub-codes as making different readings possible in the course of history, the architect’s operation as possibly a matter of ‘facing’ the likelihood of his work being subject to a variety of readings, to the vicissitudes of communication, by designing for variable primary functions and open secondary functions (open in the sense that they may be determined by unforeseeable future codes).”

Assuming that buildings change over time depending on how they are used or perceived by its users opens a lot of doors to a systematic analysis of the fluid nature of the architectural identity but does it leave the architect out of the equation? What part of the initial input of the architect gets deeply rooted in the identity of his/her creation?

Flexibility as a notion may have been applied in various forms throughout history but it first appeared as an architectural concept in the writings of Walter Gropius who believed that “the architect should conceive buildings not as monuments but as receptacles for the flow of life which they have to serve and … his conception should be flexible enough to create a background fit to absorb the dynamic features of our modern life”.

In his book Words and Buildings: A Vocabulary of Modern Architecture Adrian Forty talks about the way flexibility as a term “ ..offered hope of redeeming functionalism from determinist excess by introducing time, and the unknown … a recognition that not all uses could be foreseen at the moment of design made ‘flexibility’ a desirable architectural property”.5 The term flexibility has evolved to mean different things since then and is used almost interchangeably with some terms like polyvalence or re-appropriation.

It has become somewhat of a trend to design living spaces that could potentially accommodate countless different uses since it makes economic sense with our fast pace lifestyle.

“On the face of it, generic space would seem the best antidote to the constant changes in purpose or identity of buildings in the name of sustainability.”

This is Herman Hertzberger talking about the way he sees polyvalence in his practice in Arcitectuurstudio

HH. He continues: “Yet we should not simply strip architecture of all its qualities and meanings leaving only a blank slate, without designing it so that it has precisely that competence to absorb (and also reject) all those qualities and meanings”.6 Coming from different time periods both Gropius and Hertzberger talk about leaving a margin of flexibility that would allow for the given architectural piece to evolve with time.

The claim is definitely an interesting one, however, it brings up questions of identity for the given building: What is the identity of the building, where does it lie, should the identity be fixed and how does that “margin” of flexibility affect it?

We can talk about some of the elements that may potentially make up the identity of the building, namely: use/function, interior configuration, façade (public face), importance/value given by its users and etc.

However, all of these elements are highly inconsistent when used as a definitive formula. The function of the building changes when the typology is re-appropriated, the importance or the value can change according to socio-political shifts and trying to rely on the façade as a constant face of the building often leads to facadism. The line between renovation, adaptive reuse, reconstruction and facadism is very hard to draw especially in respect to the architectural identity.

Discourse of architectural identity is rarely a one of definite answers, however, we have recently acquired important analytical tools that may potentially help us to structure the way we evaluate and map the transformations happening in our perception of an object. Analyzed through specific criteria some examples of “lives of buildings” can provide an insight into how earlier mentioned elements are used, exploited, preserved or discarded.

EXPLOIT THE FORM, EXPLOIT THE IDEA

Distinction between primary, secondary and tertiary functions.

Lutheran Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul St Petersburg, Russia

Ever since the founding of the city, Saint Petersburg has hosted different types of worship architecture mainly due to its diverse population. Noskoya avenue one of the cultural epicenters of Saint Petersburg is a prime example of this diversity to this day and was at one point even called the “religious tolerance street” (Улицa веротерпимости).

cultural importance being situated amid private music schools, bookstores and residential houses.

Less than 100 years after Soviets came to power after the October Revolution of 1917. It is most commonly known for its slogan; “Religion is the opium of the masses”. This eventually meant that almost all of the worship places were either demolished or re-apLutheran Church of Saint Peter was built in 1833-1838 propriated with thousands religious agents were exeby A.Brullov and was commissioned by the St. Peters- cuted including the members of Lutheran clergy. burg’s Lutheran community. The main façade of the building had a west European Romanesque influence In 1937 the Lutheran Church of Saint Peter was shut and was formed by a sequence of arches that varied down and became nothing more than a vegetable in scale heightening the sense of depth. The interior storage. Its façade was simplified, interior stripped, “was permeated with a huge hall of the church. Its high and the organ stolen. After 20 years of service as a vaults rested on granite pillars and columns, sticking storage it was further re-appropriated to be a swimwith splendor. The Crucifix, created by the brother of ming pool for the Baltic Marine Company because of architect KP Bryullov, was especially expressive.” 7 The its high ceilings. The “church” functioned as a swimchurch became a place of not only religious but also

Raqqa Stadium Raqqa, Syria

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hen Abbas was a kid his family moved to Raqqa. Raqqa was prosperous middle size Syrian city at the end of 90’s and hosted some of the international conciliates. Growing up Abbas used to play with his peers on the street by the Al Firdausi Mosque where everyone seemed to know and look out for each other. But the most thrilling part were the weekends when they got to play soccer in the real stadium since his dad’s friend worked there. Raqqa’s football stadium was one of the places that brought people of all age groups together, cause who doesn’t like watching football right?

The Stadium was big enough and had gyms, changing rooms and small offices underground in an almost typical linear configuration. Not only were they horizontally connected by long corridors but the occasional tunnels that connected it with the upper level. Abbas clearly remembered how he and his teammates would take long showers after the matches until they were kicked out by Mr. Huseyn for wasting water.

After practice they would amble around the empty stadium acting like little kids. This lasted until the morning of January 13th 2014 when ISIL took control of Raqqa.

Countless Shia mosques and other worship places were destroyed and others were re-appropriated for as military bases. However, the heads of ISIL military

forces saw a different potential use for the Raqqa stadium, one that was very hard to imagine for anyone at that time. Stadium was slowly turned into a prison.

The underground gym and changing rooms became prison cells with ISIL propaganda written on the walls of the corridors. As he time went by the tunnels were extended and the offices became interrogation rooms only to be modified to become torture rooms later on.

People were taken there for being traitors, unbelievers or just being in the wrong place in the wrong time and the only way out of there was in a body bag.8 The football field that Abbas and his friends used to play when they were young was used for the public display of the beheaded bodies, as a visual reminder for everyone who had a second thought about the ISIL regime.

Question of whether this pragmatic architectural typology that was meant to serve the people was turned inside out or it was just a darker re-appropriation of the specific features of that typology is an open one but the piece of architecture Abbas remembers from his childhood undoubtedly prolonged the war in Raqqa as it provided shelter for the ISIL forces for more than three years.

Church of the Savior Baku, Azerbaijan

After the oil boom at the end of the 19th century Baku became a place for different diasporas, religious communities and even political refugees. In 1860’s the Catholic community in Baku asked the city council for a church to worship in and in March 21, 1896, on Sunday, there was a solemn laying of the church.

Divine services were conducted by the pastors Richard Zimmerman and Toumim, Zomelt. The laying of the temple was attended by the Baku governor Lileev and the mayor of Irek.9 During the laying, the name of the church -the Savior- was also announced. June 24, 1898, with a large crowd of people watching, an elegant gilded cross, weighing 13 poods and worth 15,000 rubles, was raised, made with the donations of Bruno Debor, the brother of the chairman of the Lutheran community. On April 23, 1900, the first spiritual organ concert took place in the church: Bach’s works were performed. For Baku this was a major event and subsequently, similar church concerts became traditional and continued until 1928. However after the October Revolution the attitude towards religion changed drastically.

an community - Rudolf Rudolfovich Wagner, Christian Kasparovich Dietzel, John Christianovich and others were executed. The fate of the church was hanging on a thin thread just like all of the other places of worship across USSR. There were numerous proposals for reuse of the church during that period ranging from art gallery storage to cinema halls. However, in the end, it was decided to demolish the church in order to extend the wealthy residential neighborhood around it. What can possibly be done when all decision are made by the soviet state? The church itself is powerless, people who have found god in it for decades are powerless.

Architecture is not capable of standing tall against the swinging pendulum of human beliefs.

However, the church was not demolished. Not because the state changed its mind about religious buildings but purely because soviet sculptor Pinkhos Volodymyrovych Sabsay was working on a sculpture of the Sergey Kirov who was one of the most important leaders of the communist party at the time. As the “Religion is the opium of the people” they said and statue grew he needed a bigger indoor space to store started executing everyone who believed otherwise. his work and the sculpture was moved into the church that was meant to be demolished and once the sculpNovember 1, 1937, community activists: Pastor Paul ture was finished the authorities forgot about their Lemberdovich Gamberg and members of the Luther- plans for demolition.

All of these cases represent the exploitation of the primary (utilitarian) and secondary (symbolic) functions of the buildings. The church was no longer a church in a way thatthere were no more Sunday prayers and it wasn't a church because the symbolic implication of the religion was forced out of the culture. So what was it that stayed behind?

Williamsburgh Savings Bank Tower New York

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hat can represent power or authority better than classicism? Ever since ancient Greeks “invented”classicism it became a brand that different civilizations, societies and individuals have used to reference those specific symbolic values. The way we practice power has long changed since then but the underlying idea is all the same: the Greek orders, intricate proportions and temple forms give us a feeling of power, certainty, reassurance and grandeur. No wonder that this architectural language that has been semiotically established and reinforced for centuries is now used for contemporary uses that seek to covey the same feelings and what other client would want to talk about power, reassurance and confidence if not the banks? Williamsburgh Savings Bank is an interesting example that clearly follows this logic. “..with its mix of Art Deco and Neo-Romanesque details designed to convey confidence and stability. In order to emphasize

the bank’s values of thrift and integrity, symbolic imagery depicted scenes of beehives, squirrels, owls, and lions as well as Classical anthropomorphic representations of Commerce and Industry”. 10 However, the moment we try to apply this relationship as a definite formula we face a fiasco. One of the most recent uses of the lobby as a thrift shop. Thrift shop that is the embodiment of impermanence and financial instability.

While previous examples were an exploitation of the physical features that mainly had to do with the secondary function of the building the case with banks is utilization of the tertiary function. The meaning utilized does not necessarily come from program or even the immediate formal properties but rather from the established semiotic relationship.

-While previous examples were an exploitation of the physical features that primarily deal with the primary function of the building, the case with banks is utilization of the secondary function. The meaning utilized does not necessarily come from program or even the immediate formal properties but rather from the established semiotic relationship.

RELEVANCE OF IDEAS, IMPORTANCE OF FORMS Role of political agenda in our perception of buildings

Berlin Wall,Berlin

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oes the importance of an object simply diminish the moment its initial purpose becomes obsolete?

A chunk of reinforced concrete that sliced the city in two, left the families and lovers on the different sides of the city, turned people against each other and left absolutely everyone living in fear.

It’s been more than 40 years since the wall came down and the ideologies that led to the erection of the wall are no longer relevant. But the wall as a physical object is still encountered and experienced by millions on a yearly basis. However, these encounters happen not only in Berlin but all around the world. Ever since the wall started coming down some people quickly realized the potential value these pieces of concrete may eventually acquire. Today we can see those pieces in places that seem relatively appropriate; like the embassy of Germany in Chile or in Schengen, Luxembourg which is known to be the “border-less city”.

However, there are some more questionable instances like when a 12 foot tall piece of the wall was presented to Usain Bolt by Mayor of Berlin, Klaus Wowereit10 or the part of the wall that ended up in the bathrooms of the Main Street Station Casino in Las Vegas. It has four urinals mounted to it and a big sign on top.

When a piece of architecture becomes a signifier of itself. It is not the books or images that talk about the wall, it is the wall that talks about itself. But what does the wall become in a bathroom thousands of miles and decades away from a point where it clearly had an identity.

RELEVANCE OF IDEAS, IMPORTANCE OF FORMS

Role of political agenda in our perception of buildings

Columns of the East Portico, Washington, D.C

24 columns that gracefully held up the east portico of capitol hall- a building that was the embodiment of the values of the new emerging nation. These columns were the face of the democratic society and hosted the solemn oath of all the presidents up to 1957 when Dwight D. Eisenhower gave his speech.

No one could have imagine that these majestic creatures and their former glory and importance can be long forgotten as a result of an expansion in the Capitol building, but the day came and the columns were moved in the spring of 1958.

Columns waited in the storage for more than 50 years until a woman named Betty Rea thought that they are worth fighting for. So after a long process of figuring out who the columns actually belonged to Betty managed to have the columns moved to the National Arboretum. There are countless number of people who have visited the Arboretum and seen the columns standing upright in their gracious pose, holding nothing but their own weight, almost like Greek temples marking a point in the landscape. It is interesting be-

cause even though some people do not know where the columns initially belonged to all of them share the same uncanny feeling, as if something is has been lost, something they cannot clearly describe.

However, not all of the columns were actually moved to the Arboretum. Some of them were moved several miles away and left to lay in the depth of the forest where no one gets to contemplate their eeriness. Now these decapitated columns are just slices of stone covered in moss. “They are the physical manifestation of the parts of history that didn’t make the cut” 11 Roman Mars pointed out in one of his articles. There are countless different ways architecture goes through new “lives” and one of them can simply be categorized as abandonment. Jill Stoner describes abandonment in his publication The Nine Lives of Buildings as “oldest and most immediate, perhaps most natural, response when a building has outlived its intended purposes. For centuries we have simply left behind those structures that no longer seem to serve or to ‘mean’”.12 **Idea needs to be finished**

Unlike the Berlin wall which managed to preserve its notability long after its initial purpose became irrelevant the columns that held the portico got forgotten while principles they stand for like liberty and democracy still defines its nation up to this day.

POST-MODERNIST HEAVEN

Where the architect fails but architecture doesn’t.

Hulme Crescents Manchester, UK

After writing his book The Condition of the working class in England in 1844 Friedrich Engels moved to Paris where he published The Communist Manifesto with Karl Marx. The manifesto talked about abolition of property, inheritance, heavy taxation extension of factories owned by state and etc. But just as his avant-garde successors he knew that the changes would not come peacefully. Le Corbusier, in his book Towards a New a Architecture talked about a revolution that would be caused by the disjunction between architecture and technology and this kind of a revolt was the last thing the founding fathers of Manchester wanted to see so they quickly obliterated the dense slums in Hulme and relocated them to the less dense suburbs.

Following the Athens charter in 1933 everyone wanted a piece of modernist paradise and Manchester city council invited J.S Millar who had already proved to be successful in Sheffield to create that paradise in Hulme. The idea was to keep some of the sociability aspects of the old slums while creating something CIAM people could be proud of. It consisted of four Crescents connected to others with the “streets in the sky” with vast open spaces underneath.

ness, people started to move out decreasing the income of the city and eventually becoming a negative feedback loop, making it hard to maintain the Crescents. After couple of incidents the place became too dangerous for families with children and it was decided to relocate all of them and leave the Crescents for single tenants. As ¬most of the apartments were empty people started moving in and out of apartments as they pleased which made it impossible to track for the authorities. “Nothing belonged to anybody and everything belonged to everybody”14, just like Engels envisioned it more than 100 years ago.

Edward Hollis in his book Secret Lives of Buildings 13 mentions a letter that clearly illustrates the promise this modernist wonder made to everyone; “We were promised a bright new future in the new deck access flats. At first they were lovely flats to live in. We had every facility we could ask for. Full of really new ideas and loads of hope for the people living in them.”

In 1986 Manchester city council got a grant for “making things right” in Hulme and this meant that the Crescents had to go. “The city council approached the Dogs of Heaven, a local theater group, and asked them to concoct a crowning send off, a fitting finale for the hell that the Crescents have become. On a clear night in 1993, they pushed a car off the roof of the John Nash Crescent and lit the funeral pyre of utopia that hadn’t turned out as anyone has planned”.

But the excitement didn’t last long; some of the houses started deteriorating because of the damp-

Hulme became a place for punks, goths, dickheads, junkies, freaks, potheads, depressed hippies15 and etc., not exactly what Athens Charter had in mind.

Russell Club- a small bar at the corner became a place where bands like Sex Pistols, Joy Division and The Fall set the music bar for the European audience. Unfortunately the creative and fruitful punk culture eventually got replaced by drugs. People on acid and ecstasy would party for days knocking the walls down when they were too high making it unbearable for everybody else.

Ironically today Crescents have been replaced with what oddly looks like the back to back cottages Eagles was so terrified of, what this means in the context of this story is.

Were Hulme Crescents simply a failure of modernWere Hulme Crescents simply a failure of modernism or an important lesson we have to learn about the brutality of sweeping changes that makes everything obsolete and irrelevant, even the avant-gardes that were so eager to create a brand new world, and a world that soon became outdated? However, one can argue that the crescents caused as much as adapted to those changes and a case like this makes one wonder to what extent are architects even responsible of their buildings?

Architects tend to take credit for their buildings and what they become, just as parents do, unwilling to admit that our kids grow up and they get a life of their own, sometimes quite different from what we envision for them. Did the crescent succeed in defining their own history while being a complete embarrassment for the architects? Ultimately, can a building succeed while the architect fails?

SIZEMATTERS How buildings cling onto the long forgotten dreams of grandeur

Central Bus Station Tel Aviv,Israel Architecture that promised a bright and prosperous future ended up promising more than it could ever provide. Now it is half empty, and the half-occupied by its hostages that are bound to spend the rest of their lives trying to make their ends meet.

The land that it was built was initially occupied by local Arabs and was bought by a charismatic local investor Aryeh Pilz. The government wanted to move the current bus station but Pilz proposed to build a brand new one, and he volunteered to fund it. He was ambitious and was keen on this investment in a city like Tel Aviv that was the biggest industrial center in the country and carried a big fondness for the western culture.

to lay there in the middle of the city as an abandoned white elephant. However, a place that big would never be underused, or at least it wasn’t back then and throughout the 80’s it was an epicenter for progressive music in Tel Aviv.

The Station was finally addressed by Mordechai Yona who managed to light a spark of optimism and won the government’s full support. In order to make the building self sustaining Yona had to add more commercial spaces and sell them. So the station grew bigger and bigger fighting for a chance to see the light of day. Tzvi Shuv in his interview with Roman Mars said that: “There are tens of thousands of square meters that were built illegally. Without building permits or Ram Karmi was hired as an architect and the station even organized plans, and they were also sold to people. started acquiring its initial form over the first half of And there’s really nothing to do about it.”16 60’s. However, since the building was funded entirely

by Pilz he wanted to make sure that it pays off so the The station was finally opened after 29 years and was shopping malls, cinemas and restaurants were added to be the biggest bus station in the world, a city under shortly after. With the help of media and his connec- a roof. But the idea of this city started collapsing bit by tions in the government Pilz managed to sell most of bit; ground floor was shut down to the poor air condihis commercial spaces. tions, that lead to the inconsistent circulation routes, which in turn left most of the floors and the shops “The country’s biggest commercial center is on its without any foot traffic. The station became a ghost way,” they said, “don’t let it start without you.” town. The only people occupying the station today are nomadic vendors, local skateboarding groups and the However after the October was in 1973 things start- ones that bought the shops at the time when it sounded going down the hill; there was shortage of build- ed as a great idea and now simply cannot afford to let ing materials, workers and funds and shortly after Pilz go of their non-profitable property. filed for bankruptcy. The station was left unfinished

Ilan: “I bought it as an investment twenty years ago, and now I’m stuck here. No matter what happens, I’m stuck: Paying taxes, utility bills, office fees… this place ruined me.”

his book S,M,L,XL talks about redundancy as one way of thinking about flexibility. “Perhaps the most important and least recognized difference between traditional ... and contemporary architecture is revealed in the way a hyper monumental, space-wasting building like the A building that was meant to contribute to the soci- Arnhem Panopticon proves flexible while modern archiety as a whole, ended up becoming a white elephant tecture is based on a deterministic coincidence between swallowing the lives of hundreds of innocent people. form and program, its purpose· no longer an abstraction Is it the architecture or the capitalist bureaucracy that like ‘moral improvement but a literal inventory of all the made the architecture uninhabitable? Rem Koolhas in details of everyday life”.17

This brings us back to Eisenman’s differentiation of pre-industrial and post-industrial form-function relationship. Even though the size and physical characteristics of the pre-industrial buildings (like the Church of St. Peter and Church of Saviour mentioned earlier) made them more flexible (sometimes too flexible?) In terms of their programmatic use the same logic does not apply to the central bus station that tried to address all the specific needs its users may have and once those needs shifted the building failed to keep up, it simply did not

FASCISMORATIONALE Some buildings speak for themselves, we’re just not sure what they say

Casa del Fasci Como, Italy

Casa del Fascio may be one of the most widely discussed architectural artifacts up to this day but we tend to evaluate it as an architectural object created in vacuum somehow negating its context. Are we afraid of admitting that one of the pearls of the 20st century architecture was an embodiment of a regime that wiped out almost half a billion people without a second thought? What does Italian fascist architecture even look like and as Jarin Krouz mentions in his essay “Is the building a symbol of Fascism or a well designed representative office building?”18 In Quadrante magazine (1936)19 Terragani himself admits that the fascist party was a client he could not turn down and therefore ideals of the party became intertwined with his own visions. Como is a mysterious case that makes it hard to draw a line between what Terragani saw as the fascist ideals, modernism, Italian rationalism, economy and etc. Even at the time of its erection people had different opinions on what the building actually represented; the building hosted the fascist meetings but it did not carry a monumental character (compared to German fascist architecture) but rather talked about transparency- an architectural

gesture that is commonly used as a metaphor for the political transparency in democratic societies.

After the world war ll the building was handed over to the Italian government and up to this day has been used by the national police but currently there are initiatives for further “re-appropriation”; “coalition government, wants to turn a former Fascist party headquarters in Como, in the Lombardy region, into northern Italy’s biggest museum of Modern art, architecture and design.” 20 More than 80 years after its erection Como still carries the mysterious ambiance, being a hybrid between fascism and rationalism, economy and political ideology. Nowadays turning a building into an art gallery has become one of the most generic ways of reuse but when it comes to reusing a building like Como there’s bound to be some confusion about what kind characteristics are we trying to address. In the end does it even matter?

BIBLIOGRAPHY 1. Botton, Alain De. The Architecture of Happiness. London: Penguin Books, 2014.

2. Peter Eisenman, “Post-Functionalism,” Oppositions 6 (Fall 1976) 3. Ibid.

4. Rossi, Aldo. The Architecture of the City. Cambridge, Mass,: MIT Press, 2007.

5. Umberto Eco,“Function and Sign: The Semiotics of Architecture,” in Rethinking Architecture: A Reader in Cultural Theory; Leach, ed. (London: 1997, Routledge) 6. Adrian Forty. 2004. Words and Buildings: A Vocabulary of Modern Architecture 7. Herman Hertzberger. 2014. Polyvalence: The Competence of Form and Space with Regard to Different Interpretations 8. Лисовский В.Г. Архитектура Петербурга. Три века истории. - СПб.: Славия, 2004. - 416 с.

9. “Raqqa Lies in Ruins as ISIS Near Defeat as Military Force.” Time. Accessed April 26, 2018. http://time.com/raqqa-ruins-isis-retreat/.

10. Джейла ханум ИБРАГИМОВА. “ЗДЕСЬ ЗВУЧАЛА АВЕ-МАРИЯ.” Azerbaijan - IRS. Accessed May 01, 2018. https://web.archive.org/web/20070927222956/ http://www.azerbaijan-irs.com/irs/viewer.php?id=000220.

11.Greenspan, Sam. “The Two Fates of the Old East Portico.” 99% Invisible.

Accessed May 01, 2018. https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/episode-24-thetwo-fates-of-the-old-east-portico/.

12. Stoner, Jill. “The Nine Lives of Buildings.” Architectural Design86, no. 1 (2016): 18-23. doi:10.1002/ad.1997.

13. Hollis, Edward. The Secret Lives of Buildings: From the Ruins of the Parthenon to the Vegas Strip in Thirteen Stories. New York: Picador, 2010.

14. Ibid.

15. Ibid.

16. 99pi. “The White Elephant of Tel Aviv.” 99% Invisible. Accessed May 01, 2018. https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/stop-that-bus/.

17. Koolhaas, Rem. S, M, L, XL. New-York: Sigler, 1998.

18. Jarin Krouz. “Casa Del Fascio: A Critical Aproach.” Architecture & Design.

September 06, 2013. Accessed May 01, 2018. https://myarch.net/giuseppe-terragni-casa-del-fascio/.

19. Giuseppe Terragni, La construzione della Casa del Fascio di Como, Qudrante 35-36, 1936 20. McGivern, Hannah. “Italian Far Right Wants to Turn Fascist HQ into Mega-museum.” The Art Newspaper. March 29, 2018. Accessed May 01, 2018. https://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/italian-far-right-wants-to-turn-fascisthq-into-mega-museum.