Politics & Architecture; Consequences for the Western Social

Politics & Architecture; Spatial Consequences for the Western Social Leeds Beckett University Leeds School of Art, Architecture and Design Architecture Year 3 / Architectural Context William Maddinson C3390771 02/05/2017 Tutor: Yousuf Adams Word Count: 6,598

Acknowledgements I would like to take to a moment to thank Yousuf Adams (tutor) for the conversations we had on this topic throughout the exploratory process, concluding in this text and its accompanying images.

Contents Abstract 1 Introduction 2 Place

Berlin 3-6 Haussmann’s Paris 7-8 A Conclusion to Place 9 System

The Venetian Ghetto 10-12 A Conclusion to System 13 Structure Quarry Hill Flats 14-16 A Conclusion to Structure 17 An Assemblage Amongst Elements

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Modernising the Assemblage 19 Appendix 20

Figure 1. A Map of Berlin, 1710

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Figure 2. Freidrich Gilly’s Monument to the King

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Figure 3. Sketches for the Pfeilerhalle made by Friedrich Gilly in 1797

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Figure 4. Schinkel’s Design for the Completed Cathedral, Strasbourg

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Figure 5. A Birds-eye View of Modern Paris after Haussmann’s Renovations

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Figure 6. During the Destruction of Haussmann’s Pairs Renovation

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Figure 7. A Diagram Depicting how Architecture comes to be in ‘Place’

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Figure 8. Plan of the Jewish Ghetto of Venice (1516–1997) by architect Guido Costante Sullam, late 19th century.

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Figure 9. Rendering of a vertical section of a building in the Ghetto Nuovo

by Giorgio Fossati, 1777

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Figure 10. A Diagram Depicting how Architecture comes to be in ‘System’

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Figure 11. Quarry Hill Flats Model 1939

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Figure 12. Demolition of Quarry Hill Flats 1979

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Figure 13. A Diagram Depicting how Architecture comes to be in ‘Structure’

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Abstract There have been multiple contemporary studies on the political landscape exploring the connection between politics and the city. To conceptualise this relationship and to understand its historic development and cyclical nature is to uncover the modern day root of a plethora of issues surrounding class and capital structures. Politics and architecture have always been and will always be intertwined, but to what extent does this control the fruition of the architecture for different bodies of the social class? The aim of this document is to produce a concise exploration, understanding and conclusion of the architectural relationship between the social body and the governance/authority that controls them.

Using historical studies from across Europe and Deleuze’s theory of assemblage as a methodology of examination, the aim is to understand and explore the city’s mechanisms after being broken into three constituent elements (creating an assemblage). ‘Place’ and ‘System’ become the expressive value, whilst ‘Structure’ becomes the physical. Using these three components as a method for understanding the to and fro of the city’s distribution of politics, they are used as an attempt at finding a commonality between them, thus understanding the root cause of class stratification and suppression through political devices and influences.

Following this, after stripping back the city to its fundamental power-plays that exist as devices of control, the text aims to look holistically at the city and how each element can either be a) when connected, create specific time and architectural space and b) to juxtapose, be transplanted across non-linear time.

To conclude, offered is a line of thought on the extent to which the distribution of politics has been influenced by varying factors and the existential connection of a globalist assemblage. To add, a brief final pose as to what society and its evolving attitudes should be addressing or looking to re-address.

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Introduction Focussing on the upheaval and sway of political historic movement, along with the social and economic structure unique to that moment of time, this text explores if the city’s architectural landscape has been orchestrated through politically motivated actions, whether this be ideological, social or economic. To add, if the power contained in political architecture for the social body, albeit in contradiction to the popular movement at times, was and is the correct use of political power for the integration of class hierarchies. Or in contradiction, as a poor solution that affirmed governance, exerting pure statements of capital wealth, power and a vernacular of control for those in positions of authority. Goldstone (1991) divides revolts of many ages into three stages, ‘pre-revolution, revolutionary struggle and state reconstruction and stabilisation of authority.’ Adapting Goldstone’s thoughts into architectural ontology, identified are historical studies that examine the effects of these distinct, albeit theoretical stages on politically motivated architecture and the resultant spatial dynamism.

Relating to many other fields of philosophical political theorem such as networks and actors, indeterminacy and multiplicity; Manuel DeLanda (2006 p.10) speaks of Deleuze’s theory of assemblages; These relations imply, first of all, that a component part of an assemblage may be detached from it and plugged into a different assemblage in which interactions are different.

Through a scaled investigation of a city’s dissected assemblage components, examining Place (the scene) System (the expressive) and Structure (the physical), a view can be constructed on whether through politics, the architecture that materialises becomes physical/metaphorical territorialisation or de-territorialisation for class stratification. To further this, if each component relates to one another in a fashion that forms intertwined specific socio-political architectures, or a segregation that incubates each component, making it transplantable without effect to itself or its environment.

Aiming to establish in theory will be how either power-political relationships form impacts on the social body in top down mechanisms, leading to a system of imbalance between the assemblage. Thus further solidifying the stratification of class, each becoming their own entity detached from one another in space and time. Or to juxtapose, that they create an organismic state whereby one cannot exist without the other, forming overarching spatial unities of cause and effect, creating a domino reaction on architectural events in the city’s urban fabric.

The investigations scale decreases with each element, ranging firstly from city scaled boundaries, to an area of the city under expressive suppression, to a structure in singularity within the city. The studies span centuries across Europe’s history to ultimately identify any commonalities through time, cementing either a universal framework of socio-political architectural pockets that are transplantable without effect on wider context. Alternatively, leading to specific situations of cohesion between the elements creating an immoveable mechanism, resulting in specific architectural time and space.

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Component 1: Place Definition: ‘a portion of space designated or available for or being used by someone or something’.

(Oxford Dictionary 2010) Berlin; Early 19th Century Historically, the Achtek in Berlin was used for the expression of power of the state (be this the monarchist or the government) held over the people its top down structure governed (the proletariat and those of the lower classes). Located on the edge of the city acting as a gateway through Berlin’s perimeter wall, separating peasants from the new founded bourgeoisie within, this ‘Place’ would represent a physical plane of dominance for authority. Linked to a political agenda associated with that of power, control and capital wealth, a territorialised boundary for the entrance to the city of Berlin used architectural form as an affirmation of these principles. This boundary creation can be considered as Goldstones first part of revolutionary stages, ‘pre-revolution’, that is, the scene on which the architectural solution is played out through a to-and-fro of expressive and physical mechanisms, this being social and political.

Freidrich Gilly, architect to Freidrich the Great (Prussian King until 1797) was commissioned to envision a monument and tomb to the king after his death. To be erected in the Achtek and create a more enlightened architecture in Gilly’s philosophical stance, displaying classical architecture as appropriated from Greek and Roman culture with elements emanating power and authority. With materials and form such as large columns and a marble tomb slab, in line with the political agenda of the time, capital wealth was used as an expressive reinforcement of power and attempted to cement class stratification.

Figure 1. A map of Berlin, 1710

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Figure 2. Above; Freidrich Gilly’s Monument to the King Figure 3. Right; Sketches for the Pfeilerhalle made by Friedrich Gilly in 1797

With reverberations of the French and American revolutions growing stronger throughout Europe and cries for freedom being heard on all fronts, it must have been inevitable that Gilly would see in such conceptions the direct connection of freeing architecture from the bonds of history and the cause of political freedom. (Balfour 1990 p.27) Having a revolutionary but religious mind-set, shown in his drawings is a movement away from decorative styles, leaning more on the pure ideal of ordered space, rectangular columns, a perfect geometric order balancing the light and dark and public and private views. However, with a shift from the support of a monarch and autocratic power the project was suspended, after the acts of Napoleon began creating discomfort amongst the lower classes. Historically, a monumental architecture supporting the power of authority was envisioned; but in contradiction, a show of the social mass holding power over governance is displayed.

Although Gilly was of a socialist mind-set, the architectural form failed in neither challenging the boundary philosophically nor responding to the time of political upheaval amongst the lower class. To add, although beginning to dispose of the decorative style thus alleviating the assertion of power through decadence and capital, the impeding monument still exerted control through form. The difference in class during this period is distinctly characterised in architectural terms by the origin of the commission, not unlike many Western Cities of today. To further this, delineating space for privatised industries that take space from the city as to exert exuberant wealth, cementing an exertion of power over lower classes through visually reinforcing their decreased monetary power in a Cities financial realms.

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In response to Gillys monument for the monarchy Although not undergoing a physical expansion after conceding to Napoleon Bonaparte, the Achtek had metaphorically outgrown its boundary of influence, rising to the European stage as a place of importance for re-igniting Germanys cultural and ideologically driven identity.

After Gilly, Karl Fredrick Schinkel began furthering his predecessors philosophical cause and foresaw a new social architecture in line with trends of fluctuating power, directly in contest with Napoleon Bonaparte. Always funded by the upper echelons of society (an irony considering the monarchs and bourgeois approach to equality) this would be a public monument that emulated the political hierarchy of power, but one for use of the people instead of a monument dedicated to a monarch with authority over subjects.

Though this begs the question, can an architecture proposed by power truly be for the freeing of the social body? Experimenting in finding ways to show an underlying liberation of classes in architecture and create a more harmonious and open society, considered is whether the architect was a driver in forming a new relationship between the upper and lower class through mechanisms of architecture and the subversion of capital influence.

Two projects were given consideration; Strasbourg Cathedral the first, giving way to the gothic and all round German style of the 19th century. The structure proposed a central cloister, minimal decorative work and openings only where deemed necessary, ‘the great public space represents the power of a forum for the people in the presence, not of the idea of God, but the idea of a nation’ (Balfour 1990 p.33). Retaining an ideal spatial order using classical form and plan matching the rationalisation of German culture, Schinkel, like Gilly, demonstrates a reinforcement of more liberal attitudes through spatial strategy and philosophically proposing an equal ‘Place’ for the meeting of different classes.

The second project considered was on a colossal scale and envisioned as the building to display German power on the European stage, showcasing wealth and prosperity as a nation whilst allowing on a subjectively smaller scale the political freedoms society was demanding. Metaphorically opening itself to a thousand years of repressed people who lived under feudalistic reign (the back of the building facing the city) the structure would envelope the Leipziger Platz and beyond, forming an extension of the philosophical representation of the Strasbourg Cathedral. Although the project was never realised, in this instance the built fabric could have overlapped and over spilled into the beyond of this ‘Place’, another bubble of territorialised space, formed by other political junctures set down for and acted upon by society.

After the defeat of Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo, with the dream of liberalist freedoms being reclaimed by the monarch and absolute power, the guise being unity and protection of a nation, a palpable revolutionary movement slowly began to fall before rising for its dramatic finale in the 1848 revolution.

After this revolution, and in Goldstones (1991) third stage, ‘state reconstruction and stabilisation of authority’, the Leipziger Platz left behind any monument to the people and any perceptions of freedom.

Instead, focussing on a simple but powerful entrance to the city named the Triumphbogen, appropriating the hereditary European colonialist style, leaving no language architecturally for the ideology of the new, but solidarity to power and dominance of old orders.

Architecture could only be a servant to the plays of political culture, an emblematic background to the more complex realities of social upheaval (Balfour 1990 p.43).

Balfour speaks of not only authoritarianism over architectural realisations, but to add, it being a monument instigated by the upper class to further solidify class segregation and dominance through displays of wealth.

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Figure 4. Schinkel’s design for the completed Cathedral, Strasbourg

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Figure 5. A birds-eye view of modern Paris after Haussmanns renovations

Figure 6. During the Destruction of Haussmanns Pairs Renovation

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Haussmann’s Paris In contradiction to the autocracy of government controlling ‘Place’ for a personal agenda of cultural orchestration facilitated through architectural means, only ever contested by the architectural solution in a soft manner, it can be stated power can sometimes be a beneficial factor for social equality. Beginning in the 1830’s and not finishing until late 1920’s, Haussmann’s Paris, a complete re-structure of Paris’ built fabric, lends itself to the notion of early architectural utopian visions, although carried out under authoritarian rule. With the entire floor plane of Paris as the state of pre-revolution for Haussmann’s regeneration, in this instance ‘Place’ becomes almost incomprehensible. As if historic values that inform the context behind a City’s narrative are lost, and all that exists is the will and political vision to impose the new, creating conflict between the socials ideals and political bodies statement of control. Strengthening the idea of an architectural assemblage; that an already historicised ‘Place’ can be wiped clean despite history by an authoritarian power, the political architectural mechanism that created the proposition could be transplanted anywhere. For social cohesion, in an alternative narrative, this was a monstrous act upending an entire state of established social structures within the city.

Under the guidance of Napoleon III, Haussmann sought to quell citywide problems with redevelopment that would ‘rid the town of the dreadful infected alleyways and centres of epidemics’ (Saalman 1971 p.27a). Possibly seeming merely superficial, only hiding the issue rather than tackling the root, Haussmann used ‘informed facades as a kind of wardrobe into which all disorder can be crammed’ (Saalman 1971 p.27b), but with green space, boulevards allowing light to hit the street and a more structured environment, this laid the framework for Paris today. With new political upheavals from Civil War, a scared bourgeois and in Jordon’s (1995) words, ‘a reliable text of overcrowding, decrepitude, and incoherence and, most recently, class warfare’, Haussmann attempted to cleanse and unite the city through a scheme that was not exclusive in its devotion to higher classes and capital wealth. Furthering this it is conceivable this was a positive act for a fractured social body, split by class segregation and increasing economic inequality. In addition, because of the then political and social climate, it was one of few possible routes for creating unity.

Met with opposition due to slum clearance and mass displacement of the social body, resulting in the eventual removal of Haussmann from his position, the fallout became a revolutionary struggle between the socially established and those of the lower class against acts of destruction and the exertion of power from governance. Using architectural references that suggested the power of Paris’s government, wealth and still implementing a hierarchy within the boundary of the city, ‘the focus had been on aberrations such as the insignificant of the Tribunal de Commerce which was deliberately displaced to the west side of the boulevard for more or less visual termination’ (Saalman 1971 p.17). Using built fabric such as this in important locations created a new relationship between the specific location and the structure that sat upon it, mixing adornment, program and ideological function. Creating a patchwork of urbanism and unconsciously segmenting Paris into pockets of ‘Place’, dominated still by significant structure, authoritarian government unequivocally displayed total dominance and control through capital systems.

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A Conclusion to Place; Place is the scene governance and power use ‘as an expression of legitimacy’ (Delanda 2006 p.13) over the lower class. The boundary, whether defined by built fabric or none, becomes a visceral territorialisation laid out by political agendas or for the extension of political legitimacy. To add, having the universal freedom to expand or contract depending on the dictation of a political agenda at that specific moment; influenced by class upheaval and the cyclic nature of Goldstones revolutionary stages. Contained within this static and paradoxically fluid state, depending on the exterior expressive influence, territorialised boundaries form the scene in which system and structure can take precedent through physical or expressive means and the possibility of a de-territorialising role. ‘Place’ can be anywhere, politics marking synthetic boundaries to control everything thereafter. In terms of an assemblage of components, governing authority is influential to the interior of the boundary, authorities that control it thereafter influenced by the inputs of external factors creating an indeterminable effect and non-effect if transplanted. Used as a monument to power and being disastrous for social class integration in cities, historic political architecture embodies the de-structuring of liberty that the social body desires, its extent in society shown by control over social expressionism (suppression vs. freedom). Moreover, orchestrating activities through institutional mechanisms, in this instance the architectural solution can be considered critical of class structure as well as politically specific to the time.

In both examples, capital influence and political acts dominate the production of space within boundaries, making architecture for social class structure always political in turn. A top down structured institution always facilitates the battleground between power relationships, capital values and the ideals of a social body, the architecture that remains the bi-product of these. In succession, static architecture of the space is only ever reactionary in this sense, the ‘stabilisation of authority’ (Goldstone (1991) being solidification in the production of classist space in ‘Place’.

Everyone relates to both the discursive city; its signs and representations, codes and practices. Cities not only abound with all manner of acts of mutuality, friendship, pleasure and sociality, but also strangers, intensities, wills and uncertainties. Healey (2010) Healey speaks volumes as to the infinite amount of past, present and future possibilities with which a ‘Place’ can appropriate a transition of societies changing hierarchy and the power plays that exist between bodies of class and governance. Moving from battleground to monument, slum to boulevard, reinforcing Foucault’s (1980) ‘heterogeneous ensemble’ that all elements of society are connected, social architectural form derives from upheaval amongst class and lasts through long term oppressive structures influenced by ideology, the capitally fortuitous and displays of power. Is then true political architecture therefore not only a critical reaction to the representation of policy and power? And does this make an actual physicality on Place for the social a mechanism of control that limits architectural freedom and production of space for the social, indifferent of class?

Place

Social Body Architecture Governance

Capital

Figure 7. A Diagram Depicting how Architecture comes to be in ‘Place’

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Component 2: System Definition: a set of principles or procedures according to which something is done; an organized scheme or method. (Oxford Dictionary 2010) Venetian Jewish Ghetto A liquid stitch connects the patchwork of an individual series of complex urban fabrics. The scales of different elements in the fabric from a courtyard to a capillary can change due to an array of factors, the production of space over centuries through political and socio-economic wills building an intricate network of private and public dimensions. Though consistently conflicting with one another over the boundaries that they encompass, ‘System’ has always dictated the social bodies functioning on the plane of ‘Place’.

To give a historicised account to the production of this specific expressive ‘System’, the word ‘Ghetto’ and in this case the pre-revolutionary ‘Place’ stems from the Venetians term ‘Gheto’, meaning foundry.

Coined in 1516, the site of the first Jewish Ghetto built over an arms foundry in Northern Cannaregio segregated Jews from a Christian dominated island. Becoming a city within the city, Jews were given (by political interjection) various boundary extensions over the centuries, based on the relationship between their outward influence on government and in turn the authorities control over them, thereafter allowing social interaction and a hierarchical development between class to unfold. Expanded twice in total due to Jews fleeing turmoil, persecution and war, as well as at times the financial gains which could be pursued in the mercantilist City of Venice, the community grew to just over 5,000 at its height.

Second Extension

Initial Ghetto

First Extension

Figure 8. Plan of the Jewish Ghetto of Venice (1516–1997) by architect Guido Costante Sullam, late 19th century.

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Creating a vacuum of relative safety even if suppressive, the explosion in population led to extraordinary growth and the introduction of pioneering building typologies. Moreover, a dynamic spatial system based upon economic and political inputs, influencing a social theorem of class interaction. Focussing on the actual material fruition that came from the expressive notion that is ‘System’, the Jewish ghetto is one whereby ‘Place’, with its definitive boundary set out by political and economic legions, gave a set of parameters resulting in an architecture that the social ‘System’ could inform exclusively. One could say that in this scenario the ‘System’ became the expressive notion between people and government whilst the built fabric was made of a relationship entirely separate, as worked out between the social itself.

The Jews created a melting pot of culture and heritage. Separating these ethnicities and creating the basis of the ‘System’ that lead to a spatial ideology were capital accumulated, value of trade and thus value of the group collectively to the Venetian Republics Doges. This formed an expressive dialogue between the exterior and interior of the boundary, leading to an internal development of power plays created by capital, thereafter a hierarchy amongst the social body, and in turn a class system.

Each ethnic group within the Ghetto competed for space, leading to a race of built territory including residence, trade of goods and religious dominance, a fierce ideology that was as important as capital accumulation. Poorer ethnicities such as the Italians and Germans built Synagogues on top of existing fabric, in contrast to the Levantine Jews designating an entire floor space, following a religious ideology of unobstructed access to the heavens, having no built functions above. Associating with the interiority/exteriority of relationships, the built religious element was a groups legitimization of authority and power between the social bodies in the Ghetto, the larger one could give to this the larger a group’s power in the expressive role of the Ghetto’s class hierarchy. Does this then indicate that when forced by authoritarian boundaries and parameters of an expressive value, the social by its very nature will form its own hierarchy based on influencing factors such as capital and specific ideologies of the time?

Housing and trade became a mixed function within buildings and through Jewish ideology; special systems formed within each block, altering its approach to boundary. Due to overpopulation and the expansion of each ethnicity within the Ghetto, certain groups had less space than their counterpart, due to the relationship based on capital wealth being established internally and reinforced by an external political influence.

The Levantines, having good favour with the Republics Doges for lending capital, had weight in the argument for space, leading to varying boundary extensions. In contradiction, ethnicities such as the Spanish and Portuguese began adapting typologies. …apartments on upper floors were soon sub-divided to make room for more tenants. In many cases, these divisions were accomplished by inserting new flooring halfway between the floor and ceiling. If the new rooms were dark, new windows could be cut. Another common method of dealing with overcrowding was adding additional floors on top of existing buildings, this led to the Ghetto having a distinctive element of form; ‘skyscrapers’ of seven to nine stories’. Know (2012).

It is interesting that the space given to public usage such as meeting, play space and market areas were never intruded upon with built fabric. It is odd to realise within the envelope of buildings and between ethnic groups, a spatial war occurred through the creation of a ‘System’ based upon wealth that dictated a person or groups living conditions and religious devotions. Moreover, at once these groups were unified through a religious ideology as well as an oppressive state bearing down, and that thispublic realm became the symbol of unity between ethnicities in the Ghetto.

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Figure 9. Rendering of a vertical section of a building in the Ghetto Nuovo by Giorgio Fossati, 1777, typical of the oldest structures in the Ghetto, with shops at the lowest level and residences above.

Jean Baudrillard hypothesises that existence of the social is ultimately a farce, that we are all enticed by the destructive nature of individuals rather than the collective nature of a whole. Not unlike the theory of assemblages in its use of parts to create a larger subject/object, Baudrillard breaks down the expressive nature of the system into its influences and poses the social as a paradoxically structured framework of a continuing fluctuation of affect and effect.

It is never the good nor the virtuous, whether it be the ideal and platonic one in morality, or the pragmatic and objective one in science and technology that control the changes or vitality of society; the catalytic impulse comes from debauchery, whether of images, ideas or signs. (Baudrillard 1990) The Jewish Ghetto, fundamentally driven on expressive exterior influences i.e. the policies and politics of the Republic, internally bred an exclusive system amongst the social derived and devoted to capital. Not only did capital formulate the dictation of space but also dictated the relationship an individual had with the Republics Doges. Although completely in flux and completely expressive, referencing to the theory of assemblages, this specific ‘System’ as a component part in singularity had an exterior relationship with all developing elements around it. From social trends and the expansion of Christendom at that time, to previously said governance, forming an immovable mechanism that is specific of its time and space.

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A Conclusion to System; System is layers of expressive hierarchical wills, governance (political) vs. the social (ideological) and governance (although having a deciding factor in ‘Place’) is less of an aspect in the socials formation of class structure than capital. The boundary of ‘Place’ for the system, being the consequence derived from the merit between governance and the higher classes (this based on wealth and status amongst capital systems) leaves the built form as that of the relationship between different social ideologies and differences such as culture, religion and language. Being provoked by other systems overlapping and forming connections between the interior and exterior of ‘Place’, like a web, if one strand in the relationship is vibrated, all ‘Systems’ within a ‘Place’ are effected by exterior relations and thus are felt through proxy by other elements in the social. For the expressive ‘System’, politics was and still is a driving factor in the control of a diverse social body that creates amongst itself a hierarchy and power relationship formed through the dictation of capital wealth.

Although a hierarchy in singular systems such as the social vs. governance today is ascertained from further expressive systems such as new technologies, most are relationships forged on the dictations of capital accumulation and value of an individual to the other as a commodity. For class segregation, political ‘System’ facilitates boundary creation between the social itself, creating hierarchies based on culture, ideology and capital. Identifying with Goldstone once more, the three stages of revolution in an expressive system such as the Venetian Ghetto can be seen as a consistent cyclic event, an architectural solution for the social body being an adaptation of class structure and typology to stabilise the fluctuation in authoritative outputs effecting the interior relationship between individuals.

The social classes left to their own devices are more powerful over one another than any external body, though this still creates the boundary in which the relationships unfold through capital to create a spatial hierarchy. Does this prelude to the fact that politics is the largest entity of all expressive elements effecting social hierarchy in different assemblages and capital is the expressive link between all assemblages?

Place Lower Social Class Architecture Upper Social Class Governance

Capital

Figure 10. A Diagram Depicting how Architecture comes to be in ‘System’

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Component 3: Structure Definition; the arrangement of and relations between the parts or elements of something complex.

(Oxford Dictionary 2010) Quarry Hill Flats (Social Housing), Leeds Social housing is the physical representation of ‘’rigid’ segmentarities’ (Frichot 2013) in policy and the realisation of structure in territorialisation laid out without input of the social. Thus, a scalar approach has been taken to structure to tie the three components of this assemblage together. Looking at not only its implementation and what this meant to a changing philosophy on the social and capital system from government, but also the aesthetic finish, its plan, approach to boundary in the City and the changing politic it represented during its albeit short lifespan.

The social housing block, the largest in the world ever constructed to date and inspired by the Karl Marx Hof in Vienna, was the brainchild of a Vicar, Reverend Charles Jenkinson after requesting to be sent to the worst location in the English Parish: Holbeck, Leeds. Appalled by conditions and the working class accommodation, he pursued with socialist architect R.A.H Livett and Dr Jervis from the Board of Environmental Health, a plan of action that would rid the Parish of its unsanitary conditions and give modern, spacious living for the lower classes (the pre-revolution). It is interesting that during the 20th century it was those of the social body influenced by not only the ideology of religion that intervened in cities, but those who sympathised with Marxism. To add, having a focus on equality over capital and seeing inequality characterised by lack of capital, something which still exists today. Within two years from 1933-35 Leeds City Council gave planning permission, using a demolition phasing scheme to eradicate the then back-to-back terraced homes.

In this instance, the social body designated to reside in Quarry Hill were given no control over their fate, being victims of low capital income and thus surrendering to the will of government. Developing on the relationship between the layers of social interaction with exterior bodies of power, the upper class being of high capital and vice versa, it was the upper class of the social that interacted on the lower classes behalf with government due to an ideological viewpoint, rather than of capital gains.

In the words of Lahiji (2014 p.53), structure for politics becomes ‘political order in political disorder’.

A never-ending ebb and flow of juxtaposing positions using architecture, in this instance housing, as the driving factor of political agendas for lower classes, themselves influenced by a network outside of their control, capital. Construction began in 1938 and housed 3,000 tenants, the first building with a socialist agenda of its kind in the UK (discounting the in-humane workhouse) that over the next 40 years before its demolition, would pave the way for many more like it. The project encapsulates what has become known amongst many as a failed experiment with large social housing blocks, usually home to the supported lower class trapped within the echelons of classicism. Including on plan not only housing, a plethora of social activities were considered such as a concert hall, shops, tennis courts, swimming pools, parks, a washhouse and more. Only half were built due to spiralling costs, once again the exterior system of capital influencing the value of a class.

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Figure 11. Quarry Hill Flats Model 1939

Figure 12. Demolition of Quarry Hill Flats 1979

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The Quarry Hill Flat development was revolutionary in structure, and at once reactionary in philosophy, attempting to improve the conditions of the working class. The structural systems, plan arrangement and even refuse disposal became an experiment in modern building; not only of new technologies, but also the juncture between architectural typology and social science, with aims of creating the future for dense housing projects in the city. Borrowed from France and having a manufacturing house on site, the structural system was composed of pre-fabricated concrete slabs used as the façade system, hung from a lightweight steel frame. To further this and again appropriated from the French, the Garchey system, a pipework connecting cells, was used as refuse disposal whereby high pressured water would funnel away waste. All ahead of its time, the structure was doomed to fail with leaking joints, inefficient heating, blocks, smells and rusted frames, eventually being considered a health risk to residents in the first 25-30 years and a failure of the Labour Government. Instead, and again in Goldstone’s words, the cycle ended with the stabilisation of authority by power, in the form of demolition of the building in 1979 with no input from the social body who occupied the space.

Lahiji (2014 p.55) has spoken of the political as aesthetic, or better ‘aisthesis, the space of appearance; politics has an aesthetic dimension, not that it is concerned with art or beauty, but rather that it has to do with perception and the sensory’.

If the politically social is perception and sense, from an external view it is the physicality of a perceived class system. Becoming the political aesthetic and ultimately the physical requisite for the failings of a capital system, social housing is proposed as an economically viable solution to housing the masses whilst attempting not to upset the balance of capital distribution amongst citizens under a government’s ‘Place’. To further Lahiji’s thinking, politics and the capital that it is linked to, also have spatial dimensions as preluded in Foucault’s thinking on Discipline and Punishment. A classist system where governance has power over social support, in turn magnifies the institutions capacity to dictate the social classes spatial needs. Based on a capital system, economically, the lower class is delineated a portion of space representative of their stature in the socials hierarchy.

Social housing is the architectural motif of a social agenda, the plan of Quarry Hill dictating an agenda of the time, reinforced by Lahiji (2014 p.54b) ‘in which politics is normally called ‘management’ to perpetuate and sustain the same order’.

The boundary wall of the structure becomes a physical class barrier, as if a repeated reversal of Berlin’s perimeter wall, building a community neighbourhood amongst residents whilst excluding outsiders. Forming a relationship between the social of the internal boundary walls through connections of social practise and matched material aesthetic, being part of one machine, the structure foregoes an immediate connection with an exterior ‘Place’. Segregating classes as such on an ad-hoc basis by those in power, gives total physical control of the scenario to an overarching authority, which by proxy effects, in whole, the population of the structure.

Quarry Hill resonates with the architectural-politico on a multi-dimensional aspect, space and power, ordering the social as well as segmenting the structure of class, reinforced by physical built boundary and in an even smaller sense, through the division between flats by partition walls.

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A Conclusion to Structure; Structure is the final frontier to place and system, being the physicality resultant from the battleground between multiple expressive mechanisms. The structure is solid, with not only a physical boundary adding yet more layers for the creation of smaller social interactions but also of a set of rules from the expressive system that dictate the finite elements that the structure involves.

Structure for the social is an extension of political will modified by the class in question to fit another system created amongst themselves, whilst ultimate control remains in the hands of power, either the upper class or government. A holistic view of programme or programmes within ‘Structure’ on ‘Place’ facilitated through ‘System’ create the boundary of where the interiority of relations meets the exteriority. Furthering this, for assemblage, shown is how the interior focusses on an ‘equality event’. Lahiji (2014 p.54a) says ‘the evocation of equality is thus not nothing, that it exists somewhere’ and if it is to exist within architecture, social housing is the attempt (due to impact of the social on higher orders), at creating a guise for equality utilising architecture. However, knowingly this ultimately segregates and further reinforces a classist system driven on capital wealth and an absolute hold of power by governance over the social body. Formed through not only the relationship between the social and governance resulting in structure, but the financial systems that accompany it, architecture becomes a vehicle for control, which is transplanted across Europe in response to varying conditions of social upheaval.

Place

Lower Social Class

Architecture

Governance

Capital

Figure 13. A Diagram Depicting how Architecture comes to be in ‘Structure’

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An Assemblage Amongst Elements Architecture is the imbalanced political aesthesis of the in-between space of all relationships physical and expressive.

A unified political theorem has developed that hierarchies exists in an expressive and physical nature, happening as cyclical events of a pre-event, a during-event and an after-event. In all three of these mechanisms (‘Place’, ‘System’ and ‘Structure’) there is a synthetic creation of governed actions that form expressive territorialised boundaries solidified through structure, creating an assemblage between them to create specific time and space suppressing the social body. This is not to say however, these pieces cannot be transplanted, only that it affects parts of the components, creating varying material structure but still forming a variant of repetition amongst expressive systems, all governed by the uncontrollable input of capital. Place and System are effected expressively, posing structure as the battle ground and physical representation between the relationship of authority and class struggle amongst the social mass itself. This for political architecture poses that it is at once revolutionary and reactionary in the power plays between authority and the social.

Social architectural solutions in each case of these chapters are different, in the first, authority sets out parameters which are effected by capital actions outside of their control, influencing a reactionary state of control over the social. Second, is a relationship between the higher rungs of a class system and a political authority, forming an architectural spatial strategy which is representative of capital and ideology between the social itself. And thirdly, social architecture for the lower classes is an encompassing of the former two, with repeatedly played out architectural solutions organised differently (discovered through common strands in each study) offering dominant control by more powerful institutions.

If this autonomy can be defined as singular because of the relationship between the sign and the signified, and if singularity is also a repetition of difference then there must be some existing condition in architecture in order for it to be repeated differently. (Lahiji 2014 p.78) If there is some pre-existing condition which furthers these architectural components to be reassembled in a repetitive cyclical nature, capital has become the driver in a political and social relationship forming the interior/exterior of territorialised space. It is the exterior/interior relationship by which power and capital is meant as an affliction on the interior, guiding, governing and dictating all that social architecture has offered us over time and space. Assemblage has offered a paradoxical framework to a view of fractured parts which are not only striated and multi scalar but themselves have a multiplicity of smaller parts, furthering the conclusion there are top down and bottom up practices in theory. Holistically it is all interwoven through capital creating relationships between different levels of the assemblage, the theory being utilised to establish a pragmatic connection between the expressive and material fruition of architecture for the social body.

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Modernising the Assemblage Assemblage has concluded a paradoxical pose of at once transplantable and immoveable situations of architectural solutions for the social. To add, through explorations in this text one could say facilitated via political action, each territorialised ‘place’ and everything it involves after can be moved with limited effect to the exterior system and environment whilst the interior systems can be re-ordered dramatically in terms of perception, resultant spatial dynamics and expressive class stratification within.

In whatever means an assemblage is ordered, conflicting relationships or non-relationships are formed through power structures resultant of capital hierarchies and this is felt as the one commodity that is ever present in all scenarios. Having discovered an assemblage exists across not only space but across non-linear time, does this further the vicious cyclical repetitions of Goldstones revolutions as architectural ontology as a direct result of the commodity capital?

To summarise Marxism, the Encarta Reference Library (Microsoft 2009) states it as ‘an economic system based on private ownership of the means of production and distribution of goods, characterized by a free competitive market and motivated by profit’. In a post-post Marxist view, it seems capital also drives the production and distributions of politics, reinforced by Rancieres (2014) thoughts on interjection of the social through police methods creating ‘politics proper’. And it is this which leads to the relationships of power structures in ‘Place’, ‘System’ and ‘Structure’, concluding in class stratification furthering a clear link between the elements of an assemblage and the universally, now globally connected, capitalist system.

To further conceptualise capital and extend this question of the repetition of elements even in new emerging orders to the modern day, does the globalisation of capital through virtual systems offer the thought Cities disconnected through physical means (spanning much further than Europe) can no longer be truly striated? That they are existentially connected through giant assemblages, with exterior influences of globalist capital acting upon them, cementing a class system which is no longer effected by politics and the struggle for power? ‘More generally things visible do not come to an end in obscurity and silence – instead they fade into the more visible than visible: obscenity’ (Baudrillard 1990). Is this not true of Western democracy, like a cancer cell dividing and multiplying, through capital which is a fatal strategy unto itself, politics and architecture for the social has eventually eaten itself by the more political than the politic. To add, polarised by the forced effect of what capital has become, there is no more political, only capital. Has globalisation of capital solidified class system in an objective sense leaving even the subjective escapism of cyberspace skewed by the reality of the tentacles of capitals extent?

For architecture, it is the modern anarchic architecture (not to be confused with the anarchist) that is truly incumbent of what an assemblage and its relationships should hold for the social body. Not necessarily resuscitating the anarchist and rebelling against all that has gone before (being too far gone for this strategy) but working within a post-political landscape to create new methods of objectifying and modifying the current cycle. Architecture for the social mass is no longer just power hierarchies and stratification of class, but the relationship between all elements expressive and material of capital, and it is the financial structure that needs to be addressed in new ways to formulate a better method for creating equal social architecture.

As not to pose to much of a fatalist mentality, maybe this will be in the separation from capital all together, or the grouping of macro/micro/meso economies creating new methods of exchanging goods and information in ways society is yet to imagine.

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Appendix Bibliography Books Jack A Goldstone (2016). Revolution and Rebellion in the Early Modern World. 16th ed. New York: Routeledge.

Manuel Delanda (2006). A New Philosophy of Society; Assemblage Theory and Social Complexity. Continuum Publications

London. 10,13.

Alan Balfour (1990). Berlin: The Politics of Order, 1737-1989. New York: Rizzoli International Publications. 27, 33, 43.

Howard Saalman (1971). Haussman; Paris Transformed. New York: George Brazillier. 17, 27.

David P. Jordan (1995). Transforming Paris. New York: The Free Press. 54.

Patsy Healey (2010). The Ashgate Research Companion to Planning Theory: Conceptual Challenges for Spatial Planning.

Britain: Routeledge. 337 Paul Know (2012). Palimpsests: Biographies of 50 City Districts. Switzerland: Birkhauser. 93-4.

Jean Baudrillard (1990). Fatal Strategies. London: Pluto Press 72.

Kim Dovey, edited by Helen Frichot & Steven Loo (2013). Deleuze and Architecture. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University

Press. 136.

Nadir Lahiji (2014). Architecture Against the Post-Political: Essays in Reclaiming the Critical Project. Oxon: Routeledge. 53-5, 78.

Michel Foucault, “The Confession of the Flesh” (1977) interview. Power/Knowledge Selected Interviews and Other Writings

(ed Colin Gordon), 1980: 194.

Jacques Ranciere (2006). The Politics of Aesthetics. London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. 88.

Edited by John Simpson and Edmund Weiner. Oxford Dictionary (2010) Third Edition. Oxford. Oxford University Press Website

Encarta Reference Library. Microsoft. 2009 Edition Supporting Material Hypernormalisation (2016) (Adam Curtis) [Film] BBC Image Reference in Order of Appearance Figure 1. Freidrichstadt, (2011), A Map of Berlin 1710. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Friedrich stadt_(Berlin) Figure 2. Twospoonfuls, (2007), Gilly’s unexecuted plan for a monument to Fredrich II on the Leipziger Platz, Berlin. [ON

LINE] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gilly_Leipziger.jpg Figure 3. Friedrich Gilly (2015), Sketches for the Pfeilerhalle made by Friedrich Gilly in 1797. [ONLINE] Available at: http:// sixtensason.tumblr.com/post/68193333120/friedrich-gilly-pfeilerhalle-1797 Figure 4. , Karl Fredrick Schinkel (2014), Schinkel’s design for the completed Cathedral, Strasbourg. Available at: http://ar chimaps.tumblr.com/page/259 Figure 5. Filipe Lorenco, (2014), Paris, the Metropolis of Tomorrow [ONLINE]. Available at: http://pr2014.aaschool.ac.uk/

submission/uploaded_files/PROJECTIVE-CITIES/Paris%20the%20Metropolis%20of%20Tomorrow%20

and%20its%20un%20Planning-10-Master%20Plan.jpg Figure 6.Migel Elosua, (2013), During the Destruction of Haussmanns Pairs Renovation [ONLINE]. Available at: https://f.

hypotheses.org/wp-content/blogs.dir/841/files/2013/04/Haussmann2.jpg Figure 7. Authors Diagram Figure 8. Guido Costante Sullam, . (1777). Plan of the Jewish Ghetto. [ONLINE]. , retrieved from http://www.momentmag. com/venice-jews-europe-1516-2016/.

Figure 9. Girogio, F. (1777). Rendering of Vertical Section. [ONLINE]. , retrieved from http://www.momentmag.com/ven ice-jews-europe-1516-2016/.

Figure 10. Authors Diagram Figure 11. Unknown Author . Quarry Hill Flats Model. (1939) [ONLINE]. , retrieved from https://municipaldreams.

wordpress.com/2013/02/26/leeds-the-quarry-hill-flats/.

Figure 12. Longbottom, A. (1978). Quarry Hill Flats During Demolition. [ONLINE]. , retrieved from https://munici

paldreams.wordpress.com/2013/02/26/leeds-the-quarry-hill-flats/.

Figure 13. Authors Diagram

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