APPROACHES TO MODERNITY

1 1 2 3 APPROACHES TO MODERNITY Maria Helena Maia Mariann Simon Editors 4 CEAA Editions /6 Title APPROACHES TO MODERNITY Editors Maria Helena Maia and Mariann Simon © 2015 by authors and CESAP/CEAA Graphic design Jorge Cunha Pimentel and Joana Couto Edition CEAA | Centro de Estudos Arnaldo Araújo da CESAP/ESAP Property of Cooperativa de Ensino Superior Artístico do Porto Print and finishing Gráfica Maiadouro 1st Edition , Porto, March 2015 Copies: 500 ISBN: 978-972-8784-37-9 Legal Deposit: This book was subjected to double blind peer review. Referees: Concepción Diez Pastor, Marco Ginoulhiac, Miguel Pais Vieira, Miguel Silva Graça, Paolo Marcolin, Zoran Vukoszavlyev. This publication was conducted under the strategic project PEst-OE/EAT/ UI4041/2014, funded by national funds by FCT - Foundation for Science and Technology under the Development, Consolidation and Strenghening of National ID Institutions Network (OE). The authors of the texts have the exclusive responsibility of image copyrights printed in the correspondent texts. The editors do not take any responsibility for any improper use of images and any consequences following. Centro de Estudos Arnaldo Araújo Escola Superior Artística do Porto Largo de S. Domingos, 80 4050-545 PORTO, PORTUGAL Telef: 223392130; Fax: 223392139 e-mail: [email protected] www.esap.pt 5 FOREWORD András Ferkai SHAPE & SPACE FROM THE CITY TO THE BUILDING APPROACHES TO MODERNITY - LA TOURETTE AS A LANDMARK Ana Lídia Virtudes NOTES ON THE POTENCY OF ARCHITECTURE Josefina González Cubero and Noemí Vicente Martín PERMANENCE AND EXPERIMENTATION IN THE STRUCTURE OF MODERN SPACE Iván I. Rincón Borrego 9 13 25 41 CONTENTS 6 CONTENTS TIME & INTERPRETATION CHANDIGARH, THE INDIAN CITY OF LE CORBUSIER AND THE NOTION OF TIME Rémi Papillault POST-MODERNITY AS A CULTURAL WEAPON Pedro Vieira de Almeida COUNTER-ATTRACTION, OR, HOW TO MIES-READ ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY FOR OUR OWN PURPOSES Zoltán Bun ARCHITECTURE & PEOPLE TRADITION AND MODERNITY. THE HISTORIOGRAPHY OF THE SURVEY ON REGIONAL ARCHITECTURE Alexandra Cardoso and Maria Helena Maia WEAK ARCHITECTURE – COOL DISCIPLINE Mariann Simon AUTHORS ABSTRACTS 61 81 87 107 121 133 137 7 APPROACHES TO MODERNITY 14 is the medieval stone work serving to find the missing link between the truth that its use represents and the modernist concrete work, in its most straightforward way, the apparent concrete. The new approach that characterized the modern architecture and spatial planning didn’t mean that everything was new and different from the past and the previous practices. In this context, a new approach could mean a different i.e. new interpretation of the building or the space, using an existing type and not necessarily a new type and “Le Corbusier’s monastery of La Tourette (...) is an illuminating example of such approach” (Leupen et al., 1997: 143). In the convent of La Tourette there are multiple perspectives of reinterpretation of spaces and a multiplicity of looks. It should not be seen as a manifest but rather as an elaborated work for architectonical meditation and studying. Consequently, La Tourette could be seen as a landmark of the modernism tendency, of re-interpreting the types from the past, designing new projects. 1.2 Assumptions of the project of La Tourette The project of the Dominican Convent of Sainte Marie de La Tourette, Éveuxsur-Arbresle, in France, by the architect Le Corbusier was inspired by his visits in 1907 to the Charterhouse of Ema, in Italy; and in 1953 to the Cistercian monastery of Le Thoronet, in France. This project was proposed to him, representing the opportunity for Le Corbusier to put in practice a new approach to modernity based on the idea of collective forms of life. The project of La Tourette was born from a meeting in 1952 between the Dominican Marie-Alain Couturier and Le Corbusier. In this epoch there was an exchange of correspondence between the two of them about the ideas that should be present in this convent project. Marie-Alain Couturier was the promoter of the movement of sacred art and dedicated his work to the renovation of liturgical art with a particular attention given to modern art. It was in this context that he contacted Le Corbusier as an expert on modern architecture, in order to be the author of the new convent. ANA LÍDIA VIRTUDES 15 From the meeting between these two, there arose an architectonical, philosophical and spiritual dialogue, resulting in the assumptions of the project of La Tourette. In this dialogue, Couturier played the role of being mentor of modernity in the church, and a defender of a renovated faith by means of contemporary art. Le Corbusier was seeking to renew values in the spirit of modernity, through the architectonic project. In the process of defining the assumptions for La Tourette, Couturier and Le Corbusier were like two opposing personalities confronting each other on a single project view and interpretations. Marie-Alain Couturier represented the spiritual view, sought spirituality by architecture and Le Corbusier represented the spatial and architectonic view, sought architecture by means of spirituality. The inspiration of Le Thoronet; a Romanesque religious complex built in the late 12th century, in southern France near Toulon; was present in La Tourette in the pure volume of ‘béton brut’ remembering asceticism, and as a consequence, the inevitable re-encounter with the sacred. Just like the stone of Le Thoronet, the concrete of La Tourette shows the true reality. The significant influence of Le Thoronet upon Le Corbusier can be seen in his opinion about this building, representing a witness of the truth, using the stone, and where the “sharp edge enforces clarity of outline and roughness of surface (…). Light and shade are the loudspeakers of this architecture of truth, tranquillity and strength. Nothing further could add to it” (Le Corbusier in Hervé, 2001). This idea shows a new approach to modernity in architecture in which light and shadow are understood as being the loudspeakers of truth. 2. From the city to the building of La Tourette 2.1 Charter of Athens rules on the building scale In Europe, the bad conditions of living in the industrial city brought about spatial planning as a discipline and modern architecture focused on the question of housing and urban regeneration, not only in spatial terms but also in social terms. FROM THE CITY TO THE BUILDING... 16 In the beginning of the 20th century, in the spatial planning domain, the garden city became a very popular model to follow, based on the single house. In the domain of architecture, in the decade of 1920, the idea of rationalization not only in terms of housing but also in economic terms resulted in a strong importance given to collective forms of life i.e. collective dwellings as a model to follow in architecture, and the work of Le Corbusier is not an exception (Stanislaus, 2009: 135). Consequently, the building process should be quicker and cheaper. In this context, the project of La Tourette represented for Le Corbusier an opportunity to design a building, putting in practice his concern with the ‘collective forms of life’. In this domain the project is characterized by the importance of the collective spaces such as the refectory, the church or the meeting halls. The private spaces are confined to the individual cells of the friars i.e. the dwelling units. Private cells and collective spaces were designed to permit meditation, reflection and studying. The convent of La Tourette functions as a micro-city which inserts within modernism. Actually some authors suggest about this matter that the final solution of La Tourette is based upon the idea of an urban mega-structure (Stanislaus, 2009: 168). There is a strong parallel between the lives in the city of men (occurring at the city scale) and the lives in the city of friars (occurring at the building scale). Such as in the real city, in this micro-city i.e. the convent of La Tourette, everything is functional, self-sufficient and according to cyclical movements. As such, it must respect certain rules i.e. the rules that were defined in the Charter of Athens in 1933 having as the main mentor Le Corbusier. These rules identified four aspects proposed as elements of the city’s organization: living, working, physical and mental recreation and circulation. This classification of city elements and their functions are not only the keys of spatial planning but also of the modern architecture of buildings and they are present in the project of La Tourette: the living function corresponds to the individual cells of friars; the working function corresponds to the classroom for ANA LÍDIA VIRTUDES 17 intellectual work and study; the physical and mental recreation corresponds to the church and to the refectory; and the circulation function is present in the interconnecting corridors and footbridges of La Tourette. In summary, it can be said that in La Tourette project Le Corbusier has the opportunity to put into practice in a building the rules that in the Charter of Athens were defined for the city as a whole. La Tourette could be consider a landmark of the application of the rules of the city planning defined in the Charter of Athens on the building scale. 2.2 Modern architecture in the project of La Tourette ‘Béton brut’ The project of La Tourette reflects modern architectural ideas and construction processes in which the result is showed through the use of ‘béton brut’, the absolute fidelity to the model and a perfect reproduction of the mould. FROM THE CITY TO THE BUILDING... Figure 1. Charterhouse of Ema, Italy. Google maps. 18 In this pattern, concrete is seen as a construction material that “does not cheat; it replaces; it cuts out the need for that trickster – coating.” (Potié, 2001: 102). Church The religious buildings such as monasteries or convents are founded on the basic principle of architectonical centrality with their epicentre in the cloister. Cloister means something closed or able to be closed-off. The cloister of La Tourette is unusual and doesn’t have the characteristics of its predecessors which follow a ‘promenade’, interconnecting the structure and the building in order to understand the simplicity of the plan. In this sense could be said that La Tourette is a reinterpretation of traditional medieval monastery types, built around a cloister (Leupen, 1997: 143). However, the central point of spiritual functionality of La Tourette is found within the church, which is the most significant place of the entire building. The church is the epicentre of the building and for Le Corbusier its proportions should provoke enthusiasm. The church means the place of the centre of the Dominican spirituality, that is the celebration of the Eucharist, and its main altar represents the most relevant sacred place for the religious community. Unit cell About fifty years separate Le Corbusier’s visit to the Charterhouse of Ema and its project of La Tourette. However, just like in the case of Charterhouse of Ema, the convent of La Tourette allows individual and collective experiences; time for individual working, relaxing and meditation in the unit of the cell and time for collective work, relaxing and meditation in the refectory or the church. Just as in the concept of the ‘units of habitation’, the cells for friars were inspired in the model of the smallest living space which was to become a symbolic figure of connection between the internal space i.e. the inside (the private space of the friars) and the external space i.e. the outside (the exterior of the building) through the facade. ANA LÍDIA VIRTUDES 19 Simplicity The sequence of cells would permit the study of a portion of facade which would be applied with rhythmic repetition. This fact gives through the simplicity of the image of the facade (the visible skin of the building), the perception of lack of comfort and a certain sense of poverty. All these characteristics are according to the modern way of building (quickly and cheap) and to the way of living of a religious community (the relevance of the spirituality to the detriment of the materiality). Despite huge amount of money financed by gifts, the building of La Tourette not only looks cheap because of the use of ‘béton brut’ but also gives a perception of lack of the most primitive comfort (Stanislaus, 2009: 168). 2.3 Justifications and annotations of the project Since the 13th century that Dominican convents gained fame and became very popular for their theological and philosophical ways of thinking. After the Second World War, the regional government of Lyon decided to build a convent has a school and research institution of the Dominicans and by the year of 1960 the construction of Sainte Marie de La Tourette was nearly complete. The extreme simplicity of this project could be characterized by the combination of two aspects: a reinterpretation of ancient monastic architecture of medieval abbeys with a particular focus on the abbey of Le Thoronet; and the sobriety offered by a modernist architecture language, consisting of elements such as ‘pilotis’, stairs or ramps, which contradicts somewhat the former static spirit of the Dominican order. Though humanism for Le Corbusier meant something independent of the Dominicans’ faith, it could be said that for him, the architect is inseparable from the humanist i.e. the regeneration of the society through architecture. In this way, his work is marked by the effort of shaping a better social order through functionalist architecture forms and construction techniques. Consequently, the architect is open to spiritual values in the sense of the mystery of being. His defiFROM THE CITY TO THE BUILDING... 20 nition of soul allowed him to make a convent suitable for its function, respecting certain architectonical rules previously established by conventional practice i.e. by the lifestyle of Dominicans, putting in practice in La Tourette the architecture gifted with a spirit. The poverty of the materials, the brightness of colours, and the majesty of volumes, all lead towards an architectural expression which would enable the friars to understand the ascetic life, the spiritual joy, and the most solemn of silences. In fact, the project of this convent has as much grandeur as it does simplicity with especially evident in the church. Le Corbusier did not just create a living space for the religious community but also a church where the mystery of the Eucharist could be celebrated in a perfect match between the container (the building) and the contained (the friars). La Tourette shows that the action of praying and religious life is not only linked with conventional forms of architecture such as the medieval convents, but could also happen in a modern architecture building. Knowing the work of Le Corbusier designing the religious building of Chapel Notre Dame du Haut, Ronchamp, in France, completed in 1955, and his inspiration, the project of La Tourette doesn’t mean faith for him but rather an understanding of what architectural terms would provide in terms of conditions for faith. In fact, La Tourette shows that Le Corbusier was sufficiently open mind faced to the notion of the sacred. The understanding of Le Corbusier about the architecture of a religious building is present in his own expression: “my profession is to shelter men, by giving them an envelope of concrete which allows them to have a human life (...) to build a church as a place of habitation (...) would make sense to me” (Petit, 1961: 17-18). By being asked to build the convent of La Tourette, not only was Le Corbusier requested to provide shelter for hundreds of men, but also a place which would afford them silence. The site where the convent was built is on a deep slope, ending on a plain and being partially surrounded by forest, localized in the countryside. ANA LÍDIA VIRTUDES 21 The building is designed starting from the top to the bottom, and its composition began by the line of the covering; a great horizontal ending with the accentuated downwards slope where the building rested by means of ‘pilotis’. In a word, the architecture of this building is organized in terms of descent. In terms of architectonic composition, this project represents an answer to the requested program, organized following a descending vertical. Each architectural body of the building touches the ground in distinctive ways. The church, the chapel and the sacristy are anchored in the hillside. The other three wings of the building corresponding to the unit cells i.e. to the space of single dwellings are localized above the ground supported by ‘pilotis’ of several shapes. This organization allows the catching of glimpses of the central open space which contains the cloister, functioning as an open space, so characteristic of this type of religious buildings. FROM THE CITY TO THE BUILDING... Figure 2. Localization in the countryside. La Tourette. Google earth. 22 3. Conclusions This article has aimed to show the work of Le Corbusier in the project of La Tourette has a great influence in the medieval architecture of religious monasteries and convents. On the one hand, his visits to the Charterhouse of Ema and to the monastery of Le Thoronet come to confirm that in doing the project of La Tourette, Le Corbusier had had a way to compensate many years of work, in order to achieve a reinterpretation of the medieval architecture of religious buildings, rather than to create new types or meanings for these buildings. On the other hand, his humanistic concerns resulted in the project of Sainte Marie de La Tourette as a place of meditation, search for God, and of prayer for the Dominican community. In summary, the humanism presented in the architectonic program of La Tourette guided his work can be seen as an adventure in which he imagined the shapes and the circuits that would be necessary for prayer, liturgy, meditation and study. The collective spaces such as the refectory, the church or the meeting halls; and the single dwellings i.e. the unit cells of Dominicans friars, were perfectly proportioned for what this religious community most needed: silence and peace. In this sense, Sainte Marie de La Tourette is a silent dwelling place for one hundred bodies and hearts (Potié, 2001: 7). The role of the religious community lifestyle, inside this silence, was to worship God and this convent of ‘béton brut’ is considered a labour of love. Consequently, for Le Corbusier there is no need to speculate about it, because its life happens inside. Sainte Marie de La Tourette represents a micro-city i.e. an example of a parallel between the lives occurring at the city scale and the lives occurring at the building scale, where everything is functional and self-sufficient, just like in the principles of city planning of Charter of Athens. ANA LÍDIA VIRTUDES 23 References AA.VV., Le Corbusier: le symbolique, le sacré, la spiritualité, Fondation La Corbusier, Paris: Éditions de la Villette, 2004. CHOAY, Françoise, Urbanismo: utopias e realidades, uma antologia, São Paulo: Perspectiva, 1965. CURTIS, William J. R., Le Corbusier, ideas and forms, Oxford: Phaidon, 1986. EVENSON, Norma, Le Corbusier: the machine and the grand design, G. Braziller, 1970. HENZE, Anton et al. La Tourette: the Le Corbusier monastery, New York: G. Wittenborn, 1966 (1963). LE CORBUSIER, “Introduction” in Lucien Hervé, Architecture of Truth, Phaidon Press, 2001. LEUPEN, Bernard et al. Design and Analysis, (1993), Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, 1997. MOOS, Stanislaus von, Le Corbusier: elements of a synthesis, Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, 2009. PETIT, Jean, Un Couvent de Le Corbusier, Les Cahiers Forces Vives, Paris: Editec, 1961. POTIÉ, Philippe, De la spiritualité cathare à l’initiation puriste in Le Corbusier: le symbolique, le sacré, la spiritualité, Fondation La Corbusier, Paris: Éditions de la Villette, 2004. POTIÉ, Philippe, Le Corbusier: Le Couvent Sainte Marie de La Tourette / The Monastery of Sainte Marie de la Tourette, Fondation Le Corbusier, Basel: Birkhauser Publishers, 2001. Acknowledgments This work was conducted under the strategic project PEst-OE/EAT/UI4041/2014, funded by national funds by FCT - Foundation for Science and Technology under the Development, Consolidation and Strenghening of National ID Institutions Network (OE). FROM THE CITY TO THE BUILDING... 30 Another offshoot of this same approach to volume can be perceived when corners are left without being formally defined in the construction. Pillars are shifted in from the corners and find their place along the volume’s sides. This occurs in the Farnsworth House (1945-51) in Plano and in Berlin’s New National Gallery (1962-68). This is how Mies builds a virtual volume made of prevailing horizontal planes. In other words, he dismantles boxes to highlight planes. Potency, then, is no longer to be found in the unitary volume, but rather in the visual weight attached to the horizontal plane based on its position relative to the pillars. According to Reyner Banham, it is paradoxical that the first building to be termed “New Brutalist”, the Hunstanton Secondary School (1949-54) by Alison and Peter Smithson, was inspired by the Mies’ Illinois Institute of Technology and not the béton brut works by Le Corbusier, the author he cited at the beginning of his article “The New Brutalism”. Published in 1955, rather than demonstrating Hunstanton’s actual links with this new aesthetic, it aims to justify evolution towards the organic in the Smithsons’ career. In his article, Banham establishes the school’s qualities: “1, Formal legibility of plan; 2, Clear exhibition of structure, and 3, valuation of materials for their inherent qualities ‘as found’ “5. After analysing the Smithson’s design for the University of Sheffield Extension competition, Banham includes Hunstanton’s first quality, “formal legibility of plan”, in a broader quality at the end of the article, “memorability as an image”. He concludes that Mies’ geometry is not an integral part of New Brutalist architecture but merely a device for realizing images, just as topology is a device for The University of Sheffield. While Le Corbusier’s Jaoul houses were a benchmark of New Brutalism due to their materials’ earnest, potent manifestation, Banham was determined at all 5 Reyner Banham, “The New Brutalism”, Architectural Review, December 1955, London, p. 357. JOSEFINA GONZÁLEZ CUBERO AND NOEMÍ VICENTE MARTÍN 31 costs to make Hunstaton’s removed, technological school the example of New Brutalist orthodoxy. This is why a conscious effort was made to avoid making reference to buildings with robust techtonics and manifest expressions of resistance to gravity. Their very material constitution affords them the solidness and consistence that characterise potency in the sense of mass. When we turn to other buildings whose material consistency is more succinct and which rely more heavily on technology, we attempt to see how the buildings that assert themselves in their indooroutdoor relationship, often through transparency clearly inspired by Mies van der Rohe’s architecture, also reflect a quest for qualities to express their potency. A decade later, following in Mies’s footsteps, Sverre Fehn built the Norwegian pavilion (1958) at the Brussels International Exhibition. The square main volume leaves the cross-shaped pillar at the corner, but a step is taken in another direction by the choice of material. The pillars and walls become transparent NOTES ON THE POTENCY OF ARCHITECTURE Figure 4. Alison and Peter Smithson. Hunstanton Secondary School (1949-54), Norfolk. In Reyner Banham. The New Brutalism: Ethic or Aesthetic?. Reynold, New York 1966. 32 thanks to the use of Plexiglas, and the indoor space is visually extended out to the wall along the premises’ outer perimeter encompassing the building’s etheriality. The large roof is not supported in the same way as in the Berlin National Gallery’s cross-shaped pillar-caryatids, but instead seems to levitate over phantasmagorical pillars that are also cross-shaped. Of course, the roof does indeed rest on nearby beams extending out on three sides up to the wall around the perimeter. Because it seems weightless, the roof’s potency is therefore not gravitational. Fehn also addressed the dissipation of material on the corners in the architecture of the walls. The main pavilion of the Bøler Centre (1962-72) in Oslo vertically scratches the corner out from the walls and uses glass to enclose the portion where the wall is interrupted. Two materials are therefore used for the walls, but the edge lines are maintained, unlike neo-plasticism. The previously mentioned works espouse the volume’s integrity yet also challenJOSEFINA GONZÁLEZ CUBERO AND NOEMÍ VICENTE MARTÍN Figure 5. Sverre Fehn. Nordic Pavilion (1958), Brussels Expo. In Per Olaf Fjeld, Sverre Fehn: the pattern of thoughts, The Monacelli Press, New York, 2009. 33 ge it to the extent that they do not always provide clear legibility of the edges. Both in permeable architecture and wall-based architecture, the lack of corners, due to the indoor-outdoor relationship generated by partial or total transparency, achieves flowing space that is not attributable to the undifferentiated spatial continuity used by some architects of the modernist movement. As stated back in time by Fehn, what we currently see is both continuity with modernism insofar as the adoption of an elemental volume is concerned, and rupture because this elemental volume is subverted. The subversion arises when space is modified by changing the volume’s material and treatment. The quest for the specific as opposed to what is universal has led many architects to criticise modernism. Certain others consider that the abstraction, geometry, and the aesthetics of machines and technical reproducibility that were defended need not be rejected all together in a single package. Currently, just as others have done in the past, certain architects such as Toyo Ito and Kazuyo Sejima deFigure 6. Sverre Fehn. Bøler Community Center (1962-72), Oslo. Photography Iván Rincón. NOTES ON THE POTENCY OF ARCHITECTURE 34 fend both of these stances partially. Ito declares himself an heir of modern architecture and sustains that good architecture is both simple and abstract. Yet he disagrees that this can be generalised because one has to seek specific, unique solutions for each given location, what he terms “creating places”. To configure the specific, the Sendai Mediatheque’s (1994-2001) prism-shaped glass enveloping accommodates an expressive structure ambling within it. Because the structure yields at the corners of the prism-shaped volume, or at least near them, the glass is what delineates the perimeter. The transparent glass of the boulevard façade becomes opaque on the other façades, leading to the disaggregation of the volume, and is only grouped together by the presence of each of the floor structures intercepting the continuity of the vertical edges. In order to provide continuity along the boulevard, the architect uses a second screen of transparent glass. JOSEFINA GONZÁLEZ CUBERO AND NOEMÍ VICENTE MARTÍN Figure 7. Toyo Ito. Mediatheque (1994-2001), Sendai. In GA Architect 17, ADAD Edita, Tokyo 2001. 35 While in other buildings, the structural system, be it abstract or figurative, provides support for both the building and its enclosure, here the prism-shaped glass volume is wrapped in a structural amalgam that seemingly aims to break with the resounding clarity. London’s Serpentine Gallery (2002) and Tokyo’s TOD’s store (2004) stand as good examples. While the mediatheque uses the floor structures to rhythmically cut the edges in the latter two examples, the exterior façades lack both relief and depth. There the architect highlights the edges through the unitary glass volume’s geometry, and blurs them through the graphic pattern that the structure acquires. In the Serpentine Gallery, he uses geometrical decomposition while in the TOD’s store he does so with the nearby zelkova trees. Despite the dialectics defining the structural enveloping, Ito says Figure 8. Toyo Ito. Serpentine Gallery (2002), London. In EL Croquis Nº 123, 2001-2005, Madrid 2006. NOTES ON THE POTENCY OF ARCHITECTURE 36 regarding the store “we gave the building a potent, unique presence”6. SAANA’s formal delvings are similar. The work of its female member, Kazuyo Sejima, heir to Ito’s teachings, continues to move prevailingly in the sphere of a play on elemental bodies oscillating between the walls’ techtonics and the glass enclosures. Examples to be cited are the cube-shaped Zollverein School (2005) in Essen and the great cylindrical 21st Century Contemporary Art museum (1999-2004) in Kanazawa. A later work, the Glass Pavilion (2001-2006) at the Museum of Modern Art in Toledo, Ohio, moves from the circle on to a combined geometry including both straight lines and curves. The space traditionally taken up by the mass of the walls in the architecture seems to have been emptied in the Museum’s Glass Pavilion, and a glass dia6 Toyo Ito. Conversaciones con estudiantes. Gustavo Gili, Barcelona 2005, p. 40. JOSEFINA GONZÁLEZ CUBERO AND NOEMÍ VICENTE MARTÍN Figure 9. SANAA: Kazuyo Sejima+Rryue Nishizawa. Zollverein School of Management and Design (2005), Essen. In EL Croquis Nº 139, 2004-2008, Madrid 2008. 37 phragm stands as the vestige of its outer boundaries. The roof seems to float as the edge is rounded off the corner, while the pillars are virtually made to disappear through propagation and a reduction in their cross measures. Ceiling and floor alike package together a space permeated by gleam. On the outdoors, the curved corners foster a gentle orthogonal transition from the roof’s perimeter, and the viewer’s eyes are drawn to the volume’s skin making itself visible through the host of reflections from its surroundings. Here, potency comes not from the solidity of the walls or from the emblematic channelling of the load through the pillars. Nor does it come from the geometric rays of shadows, but rather from the terse rock or glass veil, as we can see in the Kanazawa Museum. The lack of relief on the enveloping of Ito and SAANA’s buildings make them monoliths. Their architecture, as has been indicated once and again by other authors, is diagrammatic and mass disappears, anchored in pure volumes with no bodily solidity. In other words, their architecture replaces the physical weight of Figure 10. SANAA: Kazuyo Sejima+Rryue Nishizawa. Glass Pavillion, Toledo Museum of Art (200106), Ohio. In EL Croquis Nº 139, 2004-2008, Madrid 2008. NOTES ON THE POTENCY OF ARCHITECTURE 38 the walls with the terseness of the skin. Potency as a quality in architecture has gradually filtered into the ideal of beauty to such an extent that it has even virtually come to replace it. As we have already indicated, Toyo Ito takes note of this concern to obtain potent presence from form, while Kazuyo Sejima establishes the qualities of the buildings of our time: “We live in a world of uncertainty, the world is moving towards a necessary coexistence of very different ideas, people and customs, and in this context, architecture cannot be inflexible. It has to be adaptable, uncertain, and dynamic. All in all, powerful ideas are also needed to be able to rebuild chaotic cities. Architects must work to produce these two types of buildings: changing and potent”7. While changing buildings do not seem to abound much in the specialised media nowadays, potent buildings certainly seem to proliferate. In principle, it is the potent buildings that prevail because they provide a resounding, unitary image reflected in their volumes’ photogenics and elaborate boundaries. But are all of these buildings actually potent? Clearly not. Direct experience with their architecture is enough to tell that. Devoid in extremis of their physical materiality, in these buildings, potency seems to be conferred to the exterior while melting away completely in a diffuse space in the building’s interior. Interestingly, modern sensibility has integrated the apprehension of space and depth by going beyond the gestalt concept of sheer visibility, and subsequently, so-called New Brutalism came to be characterised by “Memorability as an image”. This contemporary dichotomy of space and image generates questions about what currently underpins architecture, whether it is unity of form or unity of image? In short, does potency belong to the building itself as the object represented, or is potency the result of a photographic selection of the building’s exterior and subsequent interiorisation through photography? The recognition attained of late by architecture photographers may owe to just 7 Kazuyo Sejima. ‘La casa es un refugio para la mente’, El País, 15 June 2002, p. 20. JOSEFINA GONZÁLEZ CUBERO AND NOEMÍ VICENTE MARTÍN 39 this, since part of the merit of making a given intention visible has been attributed to them. In other words, these photographers are able to make buildings speak, perhaps even beyond what their actual essence. NOTES ON THE POTENCY OF ARCHITECTURE 46 did not stop the post-war consent on the insufficiency of the modern language undermining the faith in technology. For this reason, the popular references were an initial field of study for these architects, as a way to understand how the essence and the traditional technical details give renewed `expressive character´ and `constructive sense´ to the modern paradigms. The architect Sverre Fehn and his proposal for the Norwegian Pavilion in the Universal Exhibition of Brussels in 1958 shows this tendency clearly. On the one hand, the whole structure of the building uses Mies van der Rohe´s designs from the thirties. Sverre Fehn proposes a horizontal space completely opened and contained between a podium and a flat roof that is surrounded with a prefabricated zigzag concrete wall. The several openings that appear between the square roof and the irregular perimeter create different areas with the help of light walls that do not touch the roof and glass walls that define two glazed courtyards at the back of the building. On the other hand, the mechanism that activates Figure 5. Model of the Norwegian Pavilion for the Universal Exhibition of Brussels, 1958. ‘Sverre Fehn’. Author´s archives. Figure 6. Detail of glazing courtyard of the Norwegian Pavilion for the Universal Exhibition of Brussels, 1958. ‘Sverre Fehn’. IVÁN I. RINCÓN BORREGO 47 the project is the creation of a horizontal space that changes according to the sunlight for the incidence of the sun, which attributes new formal qualities to the roof: ‘the idea of the Pavilion is very simple (…) a little building with different kinds of light in the shape of construction’,4 as Sverre Fehn says. So he chooses for the roof three different plastic materials in order to filter the natural light and to create singular bright atmospheres, as if he were designing enclosures marked off by limits of corporeal light. The result maintains the predominant horizontality of the sandwich space, but in harmony with the vertical direction of the megaron space, which is now not only present in the courtyards, but also in the covered interior, emphasizing the direction of the natural events from above and below the building, from the sky and the earth. Sverre Fehn and his fellow countryman Geir Grung have a common interest in the combination of modernity and tradition which stems from their early career. In the first building they designed together, the Craft Museum in Lillehammer in 1949, they adapted a space contained between two horizontal planes to a gentle slope. The floor and the roof descend unevenly over the lower slope of a hill, as if the initiation walk of the museum were a rationalist waterfall that is sensitive to the location. The proposed experience is a kind of descent through the art, a promenade that adds the variable of the place and the implantation to the abstract character of the above-mentioned modern prototypes. In addition, during a journey to Morocco in 1951, Fehn draws the Arab courtyards of Biogra as megaron interiors opened towards the sky, remembering with his sketches the ones of Le Corbusier for the Beistegui apartment, 1929-31. So the visit to the architectonic landscapes of the primitive cultures of north Africa and Orient is also a clear influence in their project of the retirement home Okern in Oslo of 1952-55; a building based on the overlap of weightless structural slabs that rest carefully on the ground, just as it is in Japanese traditional houses. 4 S. Fehn, `The Skin, the Cut & the Bandage´, in S Anderson (ed.), The Pietro Belluschi Lectures, The MIT Press, Boston 1994, p. 7. PERMANENCES AND EXPERIMENTATION IN THE STRUCTURE OF MODERN SPACE 48 Fehn's and Grung's attitude is conciliatory and critical in relation to the models inherited from the masters of modernity, and it produces a positive syncretism that identifies with a lot of members of the third generation. At the beginnings of the fifties Sverre Fehn and Geir Grung collaborate with Jørn Utzon being all together members of PAGON (Progressive Architects´ Group of Oslo, Norway). At that time, Jørn Utzon also designs in a way that makes suitable the spatial patterns of the Modern Movement to specific situations and to extreme conditions, his proposal for a paper mill drawn during his second stay in Morocco in 1947 is a good example of this. The factory is homage to the cellulose production process by gravity. Jørn Utzon makes a diagram of it using curved stripes that descend organizing the section of the building. As if it were an enormous megaron rested on a topographic accident, two enormous parallel and polygonal outlined walls rest over the ground keeping its gradient. Over them, there is a roof consisting of V-shaped beams that filter the natural Figure 7. Model and longitudinal section of the Craft Museum in Lillehammer, 1949. ‘Sverre Fehn and Geir Grung’. Figure 8. Sketch of an Arab courtyard in Biogra, Morocco, 1951. ‘Sverre Fehn’. C. Norberg Schulz, G. Postiglione, Sverre Fehn: Works, Projects, Writings, 1949-1996. The Monacelli Press, Milan, 1997. IVÁN I. RINCÓN BORREGO 49 light, emphasizing the internal terraced order. So the plant is just composed by two opaque walls with buttresses and by the abstract symbols of the industrial machinery, whose logic is shown as a printed digital circuit. The project for the paper mill releases compositive analyses referred to the quoted structure megaron, analyses that are later used by Utzon in his design for the Melli Bank in Teheran in 1959-60 and in the Bagsvaerd church in 1968. In the first example he builds again an arrangement of skylight beams that covers a unitary space leaving the main room of the bank free of obstacles due to the versatile profile of the roof whose form represents the name of the bank entity in Arab characters. In the second one he recovers the idea of natural analogy, and combines prefabricated walls with curved surfaces in order to create an interior architectonic landscape covered by imaginary clouds. Both buildings emphasize the importance of the modern space structure, that is, of its clear programmatic rationality. They are clever examples of the renewed value of the Figure 9. Sketch of the Beistegui apartment, 1929-31. ‘Le Corbusier’. W. Boesiger (ed.), Le Corbusier & P. Jeanneret. Oeuvre Complète, Les Editions d´Architecture, Zurich, 1985. Figure 10. Façade detail of the Retirement Home Okern in Oslo, 1952-55. ‘Sverre Fehn and Geir Grung’. Author´s archives. PERMANENCES AND EXPERIMENTATION IN THE STRUCTURE OF MODERN SPACE 50 contextual references for the architecture of the second half of de 20th century. The Italian architect Lina Bo Bardi is another prominent exponent that breaks the moulds of the International Style without infringing on its basic principles. Her work, developed essentially in Brazil, synthesizes the structures of Mies van der Rohe with the materiality of the brut concrete. Mies had insisted on the constructive perfection of the modern space during his American period. He looked for the most transparency of the space and for the visual disappearance of the columns putting them outside the building. The exterior supports of the Fansworth house, 1945-50, the accent over the immaterial corner of the Fifty by Fifty Feet house, 1950-52, or the powerful floating slabs of the Crown Hall, 1950-56 not only prove Mies van der Rohe´s interest for the horizontal continuity of the space, but also consolidate the bases for Lina Bo Bardi´s creative mimicry which provides the modern universality of those buildings with expressive values attributed to the popular culture. Figure 11. Plant and section of a paper mill design, Morocco, 1947. ‘Jørn Utzon’. Figure 12. Plant, section and Arab name of the Melli Bank in Teheran, 1959-60. ‘Jørn Utzon’. J. J. Ferrer Forés, Jørn Utzon. Obras y proyectos. Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 2006. IVÁN I. RINCÓN BORREGO 51 Figure 13. Plant, section and façade of the Bagsvaerd church, 1968. ‘Jørn Utzon’. Figure 14. Model of the Crown Hall, IIT, Illinois, 1950-56. ‘Mies van der Rohe’. T. Riely, B. Bergdoll, Mies in Berlin. MOMA, New York, 2001. PERMANENCES AND EXPERIMENTATION IN THE STRUCTURE OF MODERN SPACE 52 In Bo Bardi´s project for a museum facing the Atlantic in Beira do Oceano, São Vicente, in 1951, the weightlessness of the Crown Hall influences her designed considerably. Five striking red frames built in reinforced concrete hold up in the air an impenetrable box that contains a large open-plan exhibition room. The objects exhibited into the museum and the light walls that divide its interior hang between the floor and the roof. Likewise, the structure is very tight around the volume like a skeleton framed by the only opened façade that looks toward sea. In spite of its abstract and powerful volume, the building integrates the natural environment and the light into its own built shape. It stands over the beach, it closes toward the mountains and it opens toward the ocean with great sensibility, overcoming the schematic isotropy of the modern prototypes from which it draws inspiration. Lina Bo Bardi achieves a most spectacular development of the examples of Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe in the Museum of Contemporary Art of São Figure 15. Model for a Museum by the side of the Atlantic in Beira do Oceano, 1951. ‘Lina Bo Bardi’. Marcelo Carvalho Ferraz (ed.), Lina Bo Bardi, Charta, Milano, 1994. Figure 16. Urban view of the Museum of Contemporary Art of São Paulo (MASP), 1957-68 ‘Lina Bo Bardi’. IVÁN I. RINCÓN BORREGO 53 Paulo (MASP) in 1957-68. Two huge concrete frames hold again a weightless museum, leaving the space underneath completely free for a public square. The author radicalizes the idea of open-plan and modern continuum space with an expressionist gesture of structural brutalism toward the Paulista Avenue. Her intention is to link the urban surroundings and the building through the disappearance of the concept of front in favor of the one of volumetry. Due to the lack of a monumental emphatic entrance and because there is just a domestic stairs in a lateral position, the visual weight of the volume and the huge horizontal hollow play the leading role in the design. The roots of the eloquent architectonic vocabulary of Lina Bo Bardi lie in the rhetoric of the modern paradigms, the simple essence of what is primitive and the majesty sheer strength of Brazilian nature. Authors of the second half of the 20th century such as Jørn Utzon, Sverre Fehn or Lina Bo Bardi, among others, look at the architecture of the past at the same Figure 17. Model of the House in Bordeaux, 1994-98. ‘OMA/Rem Koolhaas’. A.A.V.V., El Croquis, nº 53+79, 1998. PERMANENCES AND EXPERIMENTATION IN THE STRUCTURE OF MODERN SPACE 54 time as they develop a space genealogy based on the work of the masters of the Modern Movement. They consider the language of nature, the characteristics of every context and the expressive capacity of the material to enrich the universality of the rationalist architecture. As if they were looking for the essence of the modern design, they go back constantly to the ideas that emanate from that architecture in order to venture into contemporary architecture, an attitude that is common nowadays among many vanguard architects. 3. During the last decades, several buildings such as the house designed by OMA/ Rem Koolhaas in Bordeaux in 1994-98 propose new structures of modern space with the intent of using it as a vehicle to express the Zeitgeist and as a field of architectonic thought. This project combines a megaron-courtyard house and a rectangular concrete box that seems to levitate over an open space delimited Figure 18. Model of a Hotel and a Congress Palace in Agadir, 1990. ‘OMA/Rem Koolhaas’. A.A.V.V., El Croquis, nº 53+79, 1998. IVÁN I. RINCÓN BORREGO 55 only by glazed planes. The only component that connects vertically the entire house is an elevator, a mechanic platform which makes the core of the dwelling equal to that of a skyscraper. This decision is a surrealistic critique of the Villa Savoye, whose ramp is replaced by this industrial device. The supports make up a collage of heterogeneous parts that seem to be in unstable equilibrium. First, the columns are placed in an asymmetrical way. Then, the main beam of the higher volume is pierced. And finally, the cylinder that supports half of the building is made with a mirror aspect in order to dissolve its presence in the reflections of the landscape. The structure does not answer to the order of the framed spaces, moreover, it ignores its horizontal and vertical directions, showing the formal and surrealistic autonomy of an acrobatic tectonic shape. OMA/Rem Koolhaas transcends the rationalism of the initial modern structures, but at the same time he preserves the memory of those. The importance of the structure underlines the leitmotiv of the house. Figure 19. Interior view of the Rolex Learning Center in Lausanne. ‘SANAA/ Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa’. Author´s archives. PERMANENCES AND EXPERIMENTATION IN THE STRUCTURE OF MODERN SPACE 62 Defining “Useful Past” At the beginning of the 20th century, H. Wölfflin stated that the historian had to realize this about his science: “A past era is like a mirror which reflects only the features of the person who looks into it. Each generation observes, chooses, uses the past in terms of itself.” We know that the “past” was important for Le Corbusier. P. Saddy has demonstrated how freely the architect approached history during his years of training (Le Corbusier, 1988). The “White Cathedrals” are an example of the mirror effect. Wölfflin’s mirror allows the historian to transform at will the image of an era through his analysis of it (Le Corbusier, 1937) That is how Le Corbusier sees the Middle Ages, “living past” as opposed “dead past”, a new period, a model of which the cathedral, seen as a concretization of the “human genius”, is the reflection: “Some pasts are the most vigorous instigators of the present and the best springboards RÉMI PAPILLAULT Figure 1. Kiran Cinema. Author´s archives. 63 to the future”. For him, the present holds the same stakes at the beginning of the 20th century, only the programme is different. Even though the past seems evacuated from the Athens Charter, it and a certain definition of its role still subsist in the work of Le Corbusier. In 1935, the text on the invitation card for “Primitive Art in Today’s House”, an exhibition which Le Corbusier organized with Louis Carré in his atelier, expresses how the past drives contemporary design: “The works of the spirit do not age. By periods, by cycles, in series, things come back: the same hours pass, once again, into minutes of concordance. Thus are related, are one, the works driven by the same potential energy. Unity is not found in uniformity of style; it is in an equivalence in potential. The contemporary is rooted in the depths of time” (Le Corbusier, 1988). Le Corbusier goes to museums and draws. Works from the past are examined not for beauty of form or colour but for latent energy, the brutalism, “primary inspiration” which they can convey to the creative artist. He adopts an attitude to the past which is close to that of the “eternal present” defined by Siegfried Giedion as early as the 1940’s. For him, there are transhistoric elements in architecture and urbanism which serve as sources from which architects of the 20th century can draw, a “useful past”. For many of the first architects of the Modern Movement, past, present and future merge in what Giedion terms the “eternal present”. Their artistic activity as a whole is based on a system of intemporal references, which tends toward a sense of simultaneity and a spirit of abstraction. The past cannot be a lexicon of forms from which to choose, as it often was in the 19th century. Le Corbusier’s relation to the history of architecture is like his relation to his own history. It is interesting to note that Le Corbusier never wrote his memoirs, in the literary sense of the term. Often an author will preface his memoirs with an explanation of why he is writing them. Reading such prefaces by authors CHANDIGARH, THE INDIAN CITY OF LE CORBUSIER AND THE NOTION OF TIME 64 who have made attempts in the genre, we find different motivations: to transmit knowledge of one’s era and experience to future generations, to situate one’s work in relation to one’s life, to engage in reflection at a time in one’s life when it becomes difficult to act. For his part, Le Corbusier is constantly sketching, annotating, striking over, in his sketchbooks and on corners of tablecloths. His least idea is compiled. From what moment is he conscious that he is building an oeuvre? Very early it would seem, perhaps even as early as his first trips in 1907 - 1908, or as early as his first work on the building of cities, which he never published.1 All of his sketches, shown in parallel to his projects, built or unbuilt, are published in the Œuvres Completes. 1 See the analysis in the exhibition catalogue for the Hotel de Sully, especially in Chapter I "Le Passe", the translation of the lecture by Julius Posener (1988). Figure 2. Square on linear park. Author´s archives. RÉMI PAPILLAULT 65 And so he constitutes his written memoirs day by day. In publishing his sketches, he wished to leave to posterity a lexicon, a sort of modernist’s catalogue from which others could draw and for which chronology was of little importance: in a certain sense, what is said in 1920 still holds true in 1960. But there is also in his memoirs the desire to demonstrate the coherence and the evolution of his reflection over the whole course of his activities: a coherence which is anticipated from the very beginning of the work. Both Le Corbusier’s conception of the history of architecture, and of his own personal history as an architect, reflect the concept of the eternal present which in itself might be considered to render pointless the very idea of the written memoir. The architect uses his own work in the same way that he uses the history of architecture generally: at any moment such a theme of the past may be reinjected into the present but never in a literal way. To a certain extent the architect ‘re-synthesizes’ within the framework of each new project. The Figure 3. Entry village group. Author´s archives. CHANDIGARH, THE INDIAN CITY OF LE CORBUSIER AND THE NOTION OF TIME 66 continuity of Le Corbusier’s research is such that speaking of style seems irrelevant. In July 1965, in his last letter (Le Corbusier, 1970:168), the architect does not divide his career into periods. He opens the Œuvre Completes with the Fallet house at La Chaux de Fonds, built when he was 17 years old, and he closes with the Open Hand Monument at Chandigarh, to which he refers as “the end of the race”. The notion of a useful past in the history of architecture and in architecture itself confronts Indian culture in a particular way. Three years before being invited to Chandigarh, Le Corbusier gave his impressions of India in an article entitled “Past, Present and Tomorrow”: “In this India which has come through the dark period of the first machine age undamaged, there seems to exist the basis for expansion, that is: permanent and human, eternal factors, maintained throughout the ages, in the essential and the transcendent, irrefutable powers of modern techniques, transient but constantly improved. The continuity of yesterday - today - tomorrow, (and I take as witness the persistence of the hindu woman’s garment), brings forward from the ages the most brillant beauty and grace and perpetuates them without anachronism into the present day, “a raison d’être” reaffirmed” (Le Corbusier, 1948). The search for a “hindu style” (Le Corbusier, 1950), while explicit in intention is not obvious in fact. In Le Corbusier’s library there are few books about India.2 He does not seem to want to develop a documented knowledge of the country but rather a knowledge based on visual intuition. The same can be said for his travels. From February of 1951 until his death, Le Corbusier travelled 23 times to India. In spite of his sketchbooks and other documents, we know very little about his interest in Indian architectural culture. Women in saris, sacred cows, the royal bath at Fort Rouge, a view of Patiala at nightfall, the gardens of Pinjore, a few quotations about the Delhi observatory in his various sketchbooks: the 2 See the inventory of V. Portefaix, 1995-96. RÉMI PAPILLAULT 67 explicit traces of that vision of India are finally quite tenuous when compared to the work being done at the same period by Weiner and Sert in South America or by Candilis and Woods in Morocco. The project for Chandigarh is fed by a globalist vision whose references are in the modernity of the tarmac of an American airport, a concrete parapet in Switzerland, a view of the pyramids in Cairo, etc. This vision seems to be at the root of the modernity of the city. If the drawings of Albert Mayer and Matthew Nowicki reflect a certain culturalism, one might say that the Corbusian design for Chandigarh is “a-cultural”, a universalism in which Le Corbusier anchors his vision of the modernity of India, echoing Nehru’s wish for a city or a modern building which is neither European nor Indian “but something fitting in with the general structure of society, technological advance, climate, functions, ...etc”.3 The historical elements of the site which are maintained in the plan of the new town are for the most part those which refer to the long term : “the site is totally empty, a limitless plain leaning up against hills and a background of Himalayas” (Le Corbusier, 1951). By ignoring the traces of the past, Le Corbusier is applying to the site his notion of the tabula rasa. Chandigarh’s grid-plan is broken only by those lines which are a result of natural erosion over a long period, the course of the river and the relief. Man’s age-old occupation of the site is erased when we look at the map at the scale of the territory. But if we look at smaller scale maps of the sections finalized in 1952-53 by Jeanneret, Fry and Drew, we see that the lines of mango trees which bordered the old roads are kept and that they direct the new division of the land, which is different from that of V2 and V3, rooting the whole in the territory and in time. As early as 1952 in the treatment of all the urban scales down to that of the individual parcel, there is conflict or contradiction between the city-plan and the site’s past, between the tabula rasa and the palimpsest, 3 Nehru, speech in New Delhi, March 1959, in Annual of architecture, structure and town planning, Pub. Corporation of India, Calcutta, 1960. CHANDIGARH, THE INDIAN CITY OF LE CORBUSIER AND THE NOTION OF TIME 68 between the modernity of the Athens Charter and the contextualism of the New Regionalism defined by Giedion. The “Burning Present” “Life is beautiful because we do not intend nor pretend to determine a fixed and eternal destiny for all things in the future. Each thing at every moment is but a participant in the present” (Le Corbusier, 1937:10). In defining urbanism, awareness of the present thus appears as a necessary tool. When we build the city, this critical awareness permits us to make up for shortcomings and to retain those qualities which should endure. For Le Corbusier, to be of one’s time and one’s era is to be at the edge at the limit, sensitive to all signs of modernity in the contemporary situation. He defines the present as a “burning today”, a “line of fire”(Le Corbusier, 1948). For him Figure 4. Walls on square. Author´s archives. RÉMI PAPILLAULT 69 the present is characterized by a delicate equilibrium that the metaphor of the acrobat can help to explain: “An acrobat is not a puppet, he consecrates his activity for which he is constantly in danger of death, he accomplishes feats never-before performed, at the limits of difficulty and with rigour, precision and timing..., at the risk of breaking his bones, of knocking himself out”. As early as 1924, in the foreword to Urbanisme, Le Corbusier places his city in the present by saying to those who accuse him of planning for the year 2000 that he is not building a “city of the future” but a “contemporary city”, “contemporary, because tomorrow belongs to no one” (Le Corbusier, 1925). “I am tired of forever describing, like some minor prophet, this ambrosian asylum of the future. I believe I have become a futurist, which does not thrill me; I feel that I am leaving aside those raw truths of existence to give myself over to wild imaginings.” (Le Corbusier, 1925:184) He describes a “contemporary city” not in the future tense but in the present, and this despite the statistics presented which reveal aspects of its development4. It is conceived as a finished project, where all the parts must fit into the volumetric envelopes fixed by the architect. In this respect it resembles Tony Garnier’s industrial city of 1901-1917, the first example of progressive contemporary urbanism. In the ville radieuse, at Rio de Janeiro, Algiers or even Saint Die, Le Corbusier lays out an urban project as in fact a defined, architectural one. Everything is drawn: roads, residential buildings, industrial buildings, public buildings... The city is represented as a formally defined object. However at Chandigarh this fusion of architecture and urbanism is called into question. After the success of the ville radieuse and the commission for Chandigarh, after 4 See the chapter on statistics, Le Corbusier (1925:99). See also the chapter "La Prévision" in Le Corbusier, Sur les 4 routes, 1939, Paris. CHANDIGARH, THE INDIAN CITY OF LE CORBUSIER AND THE NOTION OF TIME 70 years of stubborn persistence, Le Corbusier had been able to convince as many of his architectural colleagues as certain historians and a few politicians: more than the politician, the architect is the one who can best “foresee” the present. And for Le Corbusier, in India, and perhaps nowhere else, was there a politician who himself had some of this kind of clairvoyance: Jawaharlal Nehru. “Today, India is made up of millions of men and women, each one different, living in his own particular world of thoughts and feelings. If such is the present, how difficult it must be to understand one’s past with its generations of human beings. Something, however, has bound them together and binds them still. India is a geographical and economic entity, a cultural unity of great diversity, a bundle of contradictions held together by invisible ties” (Nehru, 1986). For Le Corbusier this awareness of the present is central to his work on the design of the city “Dear friends Jane Drew and Maxwell Fry, the problem is magnificent. At this Figure 5. Appropriation before. Author´s archives. RÉMI PAPILLAULT 71 moment in the evolution of modern civilisation, India represents a nobility of spirit which is particularly endearing. Our task is to come up with the urbanism and architecture which reaches the very lifeblood of this deep and powerful civilisation and gives it the modern equipment which will help place it in the present. That is a task for thinkers and for technicians.” (Le Corbusier:1950). He sees this modernity of India, as does Nehru, in industrialisation and mechanization, but along with the preservation of its originality which he feels derives from its relationship with consumption and monetary exchange, its social organization, its relationship with nature and especially its relationship with time, with the long term. Various factors, philosophical, cultural and demographic, give India a particular fixity when faced with modernity and this puts the human factor at the centre of the system: “Nothing is easier than to use the architectural stock of the white race. And nothing exists here, in the Indies, which corresponds to modern work, modern life. We must Figure 6. Appropriation. Author´s archives. CHANDIGARH, THE INDIAN CITY OF LE CORBUSIER AND THE NOTION OF TIME 78 The idea was: “There can be no suburbs around Chandigarh” (Le Corbusier, 1951). At the scale of the city, Jeanneret, Fry and Drew co-signed with Thapar “zoning plans” which, sector by sector, defined the roads, the free spaces, the lots, the use, the built form, the maximum height, the type and height of enclosures. Along with these zoning plans are 119 regulations, signed by Thapar, the government’s secretary. They set up a very strict framework: the requirement for a building permit, minimum standards of hygiene (for one house: one kitchen, one indoor or outdoor bathroom and one toilet), minimum ceiling heights, construction materials with minimum dimensions, regulation of the architecture profession, etc. The precision of the regulations coupled with the zoning plan shows how narrow a margin was defined for those who wished to build in Chandigarh. This perhaps explains the success of the governmental models refined by Jeanneret, Fry and Drew. - The climatic grid, 1952 Created around 1952 by M. Missenard, the climatic grid allowed for the placing of buildings through site analysis. The intense heat and monsoon rains in Chandigarh lead to architectural solutions such as the sun break in its single or double version, and the parasol or umbrella roof which is used mainly for large public buildings. Variations on these themes were tried out by Jeanneret, Fry and Drew for residences and public buildings: a single, thick skin, a double skin, galleries, verandas, etc... - The Modulor and the Purusha of the Brahmins “The new Capital of the Punjab is thus the first city which will be entirely ordered by a harmonic measure” (Le Corbusier, 1951). Finalized in 1943, the Modulor is shown to the public for the first time in 1947, and a work is published in 1950 which explains Le Corbusier’s 7 years RÉMI PAPILLAULT 79 of research.6 It was while working in the Mazarine library in December 1950 that Le Corbusier discovered the purusha of the Brahmins, a unity of dimension which corresponds to “a man stretched out, with his arms extending above his body” (Le Corbusier, 1955:83), an Indian echo of the Modulor. The challenge is to make the Modulor into a transgeographical and transtemporal instrument, a kind of Esperanto of measurement. The harmonisation of Chandigarh also comes from the Modulor as a system of proportion, at the scale of the general plan for the city as well as at the scale of the Capitol and the various buildings. The Modulor also has the advantage of corresponding to the proportion between the British inch and foot. It thus becomes the common language for the architects in the Paris office and the senior architects in Chandigarh. Pierre Jeanneret developed a conversion table for metric and imperial measures for the architects and engineers, which was then distributed to all the technicians. In December 1952 he wrote: “It is thanks to the Modulor that we are able to work in an orderly way and successfully draw up the mass of plans, and that not only our work but also our draftsmen are in accord” (Le Corbusier, 1953:113). All of the architect’s temporal categories applied to the city of Chandigarh show the distance covered since the abstraction of the Contemporary City for Three Million Inhabitants. What is surprising is the rapidity with which Le Corbusier realizes that he must integrate these dimensions into his project. It is a striking departure from his previous projects, even if most of the elements can be traced back to early works. The Capital seems to be a carefully constructed system of oppositions, a semiotic synthesis of the temporal dimension of the city and, perhaps, the ultimate synthesis of the Œuvre complete. 6 Le Corbusier, Le Modulor, Essai sur une mesure harmonique a l'echelle humaine applicable universellement a l'architecture et a la mecanique (1950). Followed by Le Corbusier, Modulor 2: La parole est aux usagers (1955). About these works see: Matteoni (1987:259). CHANDIGARH, THE INDIAN CITY OF LE CORBUSIER AND THE NOTION OF TIME 80 References ANNUAL of architecture, structure and town planning, Pub. Corporation of India, Calcutta, 1960. CINCEI, Giorgio, "La poesie en casier", in Le Corbusier, une encyclopedie, Paris: CCI, 1987. GIEDION, Siegfried, Space, Time and Architecture, 5th edition, 1966. KUBLER, George, The Shape of time, Remarks on the history of things, Yale University Press, New Haven, Connecticut, 1962 (1973, Paris: Ed. Champs Libre). LE CORBUSIER, "Passé, présent et demain", Marg, no4, 1948. LE CORBUSIER, Chandigarh, Press conference of May 4, 1951, F.L.C. LE CORBUSIER, Informations Commerciales et Economiques de l'Inde, January 26, 1952. F.L.C. LE CORBUSIER, Le Modulor, Essai sur une mesure harmonique a l'echelle humaine applicable universellement a l'architecture et a la mecanique, Boulogne: Ed. de l'Architecture d'Aujourd'hui, 1950. LE CORBUSIER, Le passe a réaction poétique. Caisse Nationale des Monuments Historiques, 1988. LE CORBUSIER, Letter from Le Corbusier to his mother, March 2, 1951, F.L.C. LE CORBUSIER, Letter to M. Fry and J. Drew, December 1, 1950. F.L.C. p. 2-11. LE CORBUSIER, Minutes of a meeting between P. Jeanneret, M. Fry and J. Drew, December 6, 1950. LE CORBUSIER, Modulor 2: La parole est aux usagers, Boulogne: Ed. de l'Architecture d'Aujourd'hui, 1955. LE CORBUSIER, Œuvre Complete, Vol. 5 1946-52, Zurich: Verlag fur Architektur, 1953. LE CORBUSIER, Œuvre Complete, Vol.8, 1965-69, Zurich: Ed. Artémis, 1970. LE CORBUSIER, Quand les cathédrales étaient blanches, Ed. Plon, 1937. LE CORBUSIER, Sur les 4 routes, 1939, Paris. LE CORBUSIER, Une encyclopédie, Paris: CCI, 1987. LE CORBUSIER, Urbanisme, Paris: Ed. Cres, 1925. NEHRU, Jawaharlal, La Promesse tenue, Paris: L'Harmattan, 1986. PAPILLAUT, Remi, "Les temps de l'urbanisme, Toulouse le Mirail", 1962-1972, Essay for Plan Urbain, 1994. RÉMI PAPILLAULT 81 POST-MODERNITY AS A CULTURAL WEAPON PEDRO VIEIRA DE ALMEIDA 1)-Today’s idea of a cultural “Globalisation” represents a concept mainly coined with in a network of strong political interests aimed at the effective cultural control of the entire planet. Though seldom avowed, nevertheless we could easily gather some sound statements that seem to confirm of the validity of this interpretation (Jameson; Leach; Argan; Said; Maalouf). 2)-Particularly in the architectural fields, a skilful stratagem underlying the reasoning that supports the idea of a “Globalisation”, is the ambiguous way of understanding the historical periods considered, and the designations employed. Therefore, I think it is useful to reorganise them all, in order to do away with much of the ambiguity (Le Goff; Nesbit; Eisenman; Betts). 3)- Especially with some designations like “Modern Movement” which covers different things, and which has been already recognised as being an “ambiguous umbrella”, allowing every interpretation and sustains every conclusion (Nesbit). 4)-So concretely, I am proposing the need to read the evolution from the 15th century until 20th century, divided in two main modernities, which I believe to be better than others because they are settled mainly in socialeconomic fields. 5)-The first one to be considered covers all the period from the Renaissance until the end of the last century, and it is considered the Macro Paradigm of Anthropological Modernity. 6)-It includes the Minor Paradigm of Sociological Modernity which is more specific and comes with peculiar problems implied by the Industrial Revolution. 7)-They both include several main periods and some other micro periods like modernism and post-modernism which are precisely that: movements totally integrated on the Great Paradigms considered before. 8)-Nevertheless the 21th century assists to the birth of Post Modernity, which corresponds to another Macro 82 PEDRO VIEIRA DE ALMEIDA Paradigm, that splits out all principles structuring the Paradigms existent until then. 9) Besides, Post Modernity implies a new cultural consciousness merged with a strong political consciousness spread all over the world. 10)- Trying to be aware of this new demanding era is perhaps the first step, a big one, in order to oppose the idea of a procrustean and sterilising “Globalisation”. 1)- Today we can easily find almost everywhere texts referring to a “Globalisation” as a notion that is self-evident and in some way ineluctable. However, I am convinced that this is not an naif concept but it corresponds to an idea mainly coined in a network of very strong and well-defined political interests. As such, “Globalisation” corresponds to an aggressive weapon in the field of culture. Of course this is my own view on the matter but we could find many other opinions supporting that statement. We could quote from Edward Said who in 78 underlies “that political imperialism tries to control all academic research, all imaginative studies”, or expresses the idea that we lack a general study about “imperialism and culture” (Said, 2004:15). We could quote as well from Fredric Jameson who in 84 writes that Post-modern culture in fact corresponds to a new effort of the United States to rule the planet economically and militarily (Jameson, 1991[1984]:19). We could quote from Montaner who more recently underlied that since the thirties, North American cultural politics has tried to control the cultural and artistic production all over the world (Montaner, 2001:13). And so on. Had we time enough we could quote as well from Neil Leach (2005), from Amin Maalouf (2002) and many others. 2)- Specifically in the architectural fields, a skilful stratagem is used to support 83 POST-MODERNITY AS A CULTURAL WEAPON the idea of an unavoidable “Globalisation”, trying to transform History into a futile exercise, as the historian Jacques Le Goff (1982:72) refers, or changing as far as possible cultural references, blurring the borders between periods of evolution in history and rendering ambiguous or senseless all periods previously defined. Of course this can be used as a tool for an improved historical understanding as Jacques Le Goff has done by proposing to extend the Middle Ages until the19th century as a continuous evolution. It is easy to understand how this corresponds to a proposition that determines new paths of research and new global interpretations in the ways of considering History. Nevertheless today’s pseudo “arguments” are used as an opportunistic tool twisting and perverting any interpretation, in order to reach certain political objectives. Neil Leach adverts that we are living in a time when it is possible to frame and distort “truth” in order to validate the myths of History (Leach, 2005[1999]:40). Finally we learn from Paul Betts how far certain circles and interests are decided to go just to reach that aim of twisting History (Betts, 2009: 200). 3)-This is especially so with certain designations such as “Modern Movement” which covers different things, what has been already recognised as being an “ambiguous umbrella”, allows every interpretation and sustains every conclusion (Nesbit, 1996: 12). Charles Jenks in 85 had denounced the lack of critical reliability of these kinds of designations (Jenks, 1985:11). 4)- That’s the reason why I think that, as far as architecture is concerned, the attempt to re-analyze the issue of more operative periods in History is an important step to take. Concretely, I would like to propose the need to reorganise the historical evolution from the Renaissance until the end of 20th century, divided in two 84 main periods of Modernities that are partially superimposed but that I suppose more warranted than others because they are settled mainly in social-economic fields. 5)-The first one to be considered covers generically the whole period and is the Macro Paradigm of Anthropological Modernity. This means that men have ceased to think about themselves as a consequence of metaphysical conceptions (in this period Rome would be the Caput Mundi). From now on slowly but firmly, men are the real centre of any speculation, and the conception of God is in fact a real consequence of our ideas about ourselves (Almeida, 2005). 6)-Though in the second half of this period, with the economic and social problems that arise from the Industrial Revolution, the specific transformation of life conditions forces us to consider a new Modernity which is totally integrated in the preceding period, rendering it more accurate. That one is a period we could name the Minor Paradigm of Sociological Modernity (from now on Paris becomes the Caput Mundi) (Almeida, 2005). 7)-They both include micro periods like Modernism and Post-modernism which, independently of their qualities and general merits, are nothing but professional movements defining specific paths of research, like many others that have occurred during the long period of Modernities. 8)- In the 20th century, especially after World War II, we can enumerate several attempts to transform New York into the capital of culture (NY Caput Mundi) (Almeida, 2005). 9)- Anyway, in the 21th century we also witness the birth of the Macro Paradigm of the Post Modernity. PEDRO VIEIRA DE ALMEIDA 85 This represents a fairly new cultural circumstance. No more a world centralised culture, no more peripheral countries, no more guiding cities and vanguards meaning world wide values. 10)- We can say that this Macro-Paradigm disintegrates thoroughly the Paradigms existent until then, which means that now it is spread all over the world, and that a new cultural consciousness which refuses to acknowledge any country or any city the legitimacy of claiming to be the cultural global leaders all over the planet. 11)- Of course this new Macro Paradigm of Post Modernity means a strong cultural consciousness but it represents a strong political consciousness as well. Both of them are absolutely necessary to oppose the idea of a procrustean and sterilising “Globalisation”. 12)- To cope with this new era – I believe a big and decisive one-- is perhaps the first step, to be done to establish a new and more suitable frame work in order improve research on those matters. Acknowledgments This article was completed in 2010 as part of the project The ‘Popular Architecture in Portugal’: a critical look (FCT: PTDC/AUR-AQI/099063: COMPETE: FCOMP-01-0124-FEDER-008832). POST-MODERNITY AS A CULTURAL WEAPON 86 References AGREST, Diana and Gandelsonas, Mario, “Semiotics and Architecture. Ideological consumption or theoretical work” in Theorizing a New Agenda for Architecture. An Anthology of Architectural Theory. 19651995. Kate Nesbitt, Editor. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1996 (1973). ALMEIDA, Pedro Vieira de, “Arquitectura e Identidade” in Arte e Identidade - vinte e um por vinte e um, nº 2, Porto: ESAP, 2006. ALMEIDA, Pedro Vieira de, Da Teoria. Oito Lições. Porto: ESAP, 2005. ARGAN, Giulio Carlo, História da Arte como História da Cidade. S. Paulo: Ed. Martins Fontes, 1998. BETTS, Paul, “The Bauhaus as a Cold War Weapon. An American-German joint venture” in The Bauhaus Conflits 1919-2009. Controversies and Counterparts. Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2009. CANIZARO, Vincent B., Editor, Architectural Regionalism. Collected Writings on Place, Modernity, and Tradition. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2007. JAMESON, Fredric, El posmodernismo o la lógica cultural del capitalismo avanzado. Barcelona: Editorial Paidós, 1991 (1984). JENKS, Charles, Modern Movements in Architecture. Introduction to the 2ª edition. Penguin Books, 1985. LE GOFF, Jacques, Reflexões sobre a História. Lisboa: Edições 70, 1982. LEACH, Neil, A Anestética da Arquitectura. Lisboa: Antígona, 2005 (1999). MAALOUF, Amin, As Identidades Assassinas. Miraflores: Difel, 1999. MONTANER, Josep Maria, Depois do Movimento Moderno. Barcelona: Gustavo Gili, 2001. NESBITT, Kate, (Editor), Theorizing a New Agenda for Architecture. An Anthology of Architectural Theory. 1965-1995. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1996. SAID, Edward, Orientalismo. Representações Ocidentais do Oriente. Lisboa: Livros Cotovia, 2004. PEDRO VIEIRA DE ALMEIDA 87 COUNTER-ATTRACTION, OR, HOW TO MIES-READ ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY FOR OUR OWN PURPOSES ZOLTÁN BUN Several contemporary architects have turned to Mies van der Rohe while they are dealing with real projects and not with the goal of building a pure theoretical edifice: Peter Eisenman and Daniel Libeskind on a radical formal basis, and Rem Koolhaas and Bernard Tschumi on a programmatic one. These practices were circling around Eisenman from the ‘70s in the journal of Oppositions to the ‘90s in the ANY conferences. Now we are going to investigate only Eisenman and Koolhaas in detail, their work from 1985 to 2000. The question is what do they want from Mies and why do they refer to him specifically? To reveal this relationship let me introduce the term ‘culture of interpretation’ in which I place hermeneutics, deconstruction or difference philosophy—and Hans-Georg Gadamer, Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze or Fredric Jameson— next to each other, being aware of the problems of this blurring. The culture of interpretation or the hermeneutics as the ’art of understanding’ originates in the shaken faith of universal reason or of scientific causal explanations. It is sceptical about dominating the world by a final or basic principle which then cannot be considered as an opposition of (metaphysical) spirit and (scientific) material. It is the model of openness and freedom which means that this kind of individual 94 context, a fictitious history of the site was studied: the ground level forms or footprints of Mies’s two towers were superimposed on each other (by the digital technique of morphing) and then the top plan was rotated off of the base plan. For Koolhaas the basic problem was twofold: on the one hand he wanted to criticize the architectural exhibitions which degrade the discipline eliminating the dispute about its complexity or relationships; this ends in a quasior fakearchitecture since the installations untied architecture from real tasks like clients, use or technology. The other side of the problem was that Koolhaas’s project was contemporary with the rebuilding of Mies’s Barcelona Pavilion, which had been destroyed more than fifty years before, and Koolhaas wasn’t able to differentiate it from a Disney-act. So the two threads became one in the designated room in Milan in the form of ‘an exhibit about exhibition’, or, using Eisenman’s words, in the form of ‘the sign of the sign’. Thus the Barcelona Pavilion was reconstructed inside the palazzo and since the room was curved the Pavilion also needed to be ZOLTÁN BUN Figure 3. Barcelona Pavilion reconstruction plan of Koolhaas. (OMA, 1988:7). 95 curved. What is more, Koolhaas’s Office for Metropolitan Architecture created an afterlife fiction or a fake mythology of the Pavilion as if it had not been pulled down after its half-year-life in the 1929 World Exhibition. This vitriolic story of the non-usable quasi-building was also exhibited in the curved pavilion by a massive multimedia-set. At first sight these two projects, the skyscraper and the pavilion, are literally the twisting of Mies; they seem to be banal and exist for their own sake. But through their pure conception and the didactic manifestation of it we can see clearly at least three important things: Firstly, the so-called author is really dead as we were aware of it. The free interpretations mark both the unique aspects of Eisenman and Koolhaas and, at the same time, mark the shifting emphasis from their names as authors, or rather as misreaders, to their projects as texts. Furthermore the two architects have a propensity for linking their own concepts together from time to time. Eisenman used Le Corbusier’s Venice Hospital plan in his Cannaregio plan, where his earlier house model was imported too, and then the whole plan was transferred to Paris to a lot in the Parc de la Villette where co-authors were Jacques Derrida and Tschumi. Also, Koolhaas likes to propagate his astonishing idea to use the plans, that is the shape and structure, of a Dutch family house to the Casa Musica in Porto which process fits in the series of experiments of organizing space by the spiral. But they are just following their father’s footsteps as Mies continuously developed his concepts, based on the relationship between free space and structural formation, both in the early European houses and in the public buildings in America. Secondly, modern function became a subordinate factor in both cases under the textuality or concept of architectural discipline. And finally, to tell the narrative of the concept of the skyscraper-clone and the pavilion-clone, Eisenman used the computer to do the morphing and to make the process of design transparent, while Koolhaas communicated by mediatransmission, through images, videos, voices and suchlike. So immaterial high COUNTER-ATTRACTION, OR, HOW TO MIES-READ ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY FOR OUR OWN PURPOSES 96 technology and fictitious concepts based on reality were emphatically combined to reveal, with intended criticism, the nature of contemporary image-based culture, which is unambiguous, representational and nothing more than what we see on the surface. *** The direct approach is about the question of verticality and it deals with the concept of Figure vs. Ground. The narrative frame is the competition for creating a new centre of the IIT campus in Chicago in 1997; Koolhaas’s proposal won and it was completed in 2004. Eisenman used an analogy to begin thinking about Mies’s masterplan and the relationship between this and a new building: his example was the 70-ton steel cube of Richard Serra, which was placed on the podium of Mies’s Neue ZOLTÁN BUN Figure 4. Serra’s cube as ‘figure’ made both the Miesian glass-edifice and its podium a ‘ground’. Drawing of the author. Figure 5. Horizontality of the IIT campus: the buildings belong to the ground. Drawing of the author. 97 Nationalgalerie in Berlin in 1977. It was not enough for Serra to contrast the massive and heavy materiality of the cube with Mies’s entirely transparent edifice, so one edge of the cube was sunk three inches5 into the pavement, which is the roof of the real gallery space partly under the ground. According to Eisenman this act, destabilizing the solid steel volume and playing with gravity, leads to the questioning of the traditional figure/ground conflicting relationship. In this aspect the cube rewrites the original Miesian relationship between the glass edifice and the supposedly basic podium of it, creating a figure/ground relationship between the sculpture and its artificial context, making both the edifice and the podium a ground. Then, in the IIT campus masterplan, there is a so-called horizontal dominance investigated by Eisenman. He sees the campus as a kind of solid mass that contains both the ground and the building blocks. They are incorporated with the ‘voidness’ of signifying absence through the formation of the corners. We should see this misreading of Eisenman as a continuous investigation from the cruciform shape of the column of the Barcelona Pavilion. In Chicago, I think, the concept is like the drawing of multistable figures, the vase vs. face, in which the two counterpoints get meaning according to the viewer. Architecturally it can be considered as a shift from the opposition of figure/ground to the attachment of a figure/figure formation. The IIT-proposal wants to be a critique of Mies’s idealism according to Eisenman. He says that the aim is ‘to bring the past [that is a historical ground] into a critical present [as figure], to see Mies in a manner that has been repressed by his own modernist context’.6 By ‘figuring’ both the historical and physical ground the project does not want to hurt the objects of the campus system but tries to free them from their modernist idealism. So there is no historicism, no formal challenge, no originality (as a figure/ground 5 Approximately 7,62 cm. 6 Project description by Eisenman (Davidson, 2006:260). COUNTER-ATTRACTION, OR, HOW TO MIES-READ ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY FOR OUR OWN PURPOSES 98 Figure 6. Eisenman’s proposal for the new centre of the IIT campus. (Davidson, 2006:262). ZOLTÁN BUN 99 relation) and there is no edifice. Although Eisenman wants, by reframing or by recontextualizing the campus, to ignore the dominating and thus ideal horizontal plane, ‘figuring’ both ground and underground would rather emphasize it. Furthermore, as I see, distorting the overall rigid grid with an infinite topological net recalls more totalizing principles: the idea of an architecture that is able to solve the problems of the campus by formalism and the idea of ‘topology’ that is the direct manifestation or form of the hybrid, networked or rhizomatic model of our own era. The keyword for Koolhaas was the lapidary. It means here that all the aphorisms of Mies, like ‘Less is More’, on the one hand carefully hide his real intentions by their simplicity and transparency, and on the other, because of this so-called easy-understanding, they become dogmatic cornerstones later. Since Mies never ‘explained’ himself except in the most lapidary terms it is (too) easy to misread him, so Koolhaas asks if ‘Mies is to blame for his own misreading’?7 And of course, as Eisenman did, Koolhaas repeats his theoretic approach as a visual commonplace. As usual, he twists and turns the interior with ramps, elevated slabs and stairs, according to the pre-existing footpaths on the site, and makes underground excavations around Mies’s Commons Building just for fun: to see the foundations of the old building from the restaurant’s terrace. But there is another aspect here, of which Kolhaas is aware, as we saw in connection with the pavilion of the Barcelona Pavilion, that is the problem of a so-called monument. He chose the site next to the Commons Building, in opposition to Eisenman who preferred a more neutral one; Koolhaas treated the existing building as a ground that can be built onto and not as an untouchable object or monument from the fifties. This ‘untouchability’ would be far away from Mies’s 7 He continues as follows: ‘Mies’s fusion of the sublime and the generic/featureless into a new hybrid was a form of alchemy, a laboratory experiment that could never be duplicated by others. Is the magician responsible for the lack of intelligence of his believers? Could Mies have avoided the endless reproduction of the Box that, in the 60s and 70s, threatened to take the essence of the original in an avalanche of reproduction, to give the original a bad name? Did he send us unknowingly to our mediocrity?’ (Koolhaas, 2004:189). COUNTER-ATTRACTION, OR, HOW TO MIES-READ ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY FOR OUR OWN PURPOSES 100 intention to host any program or change in his buildings. At the same time the excavation takes us closer to a literally deeper reading of Mies: to understand that swindler structure which hides the undesirable under the ground to make ‘The less is more’ architecture above. So the concept of Eisenman suggests that Mies’s overground figures are one and the same with their underground counterparts, while Koolhaas whispers that Mies was a cheater who made quasi lifted up low-rise buildings in the campus in which any function can be housed by the column-free, opened interior. But the interiors of both new proposals are differentiated programmatically and formally, which makes a great noise beside Mies’s silence. At the same time they are cautious or ‘Almost nothing’ on, or, over the ground. *** Figure 7. Mies’s Commons Building surrounded by the new student centre of Koolhaas in the IIT campus. Photo from Flickr. ZOLTÁN BUN 101 We started from denying the universal directives of abstract ideologies, which also exist today in the form of pure digitally virtual utopia-constructions or that of sustainable dogmas. The concepts illustrated above want to escape from them by a kind of individualizing or rather ‘singularizing’ nature. Here, instead of historians or critics, architects write their own critical or self-critical architectural history, placing their fathers’ image next to their own. Hence the lines of thought of Eisenman and Koolhaas are not historical readings, but generative interpretations. They turn to Mies because in his works the modern Zeitgeist did not appear in formalist aesthetics, but coded in the construction technology.8 The projects of Mies were not exiled into utopias but tried to overcome practical life. The meaning was not lost here but recreated in the constructing system, in the so-called buildup of the concept. This introduces a kind of autonomy of the discipline rooted in the structural and conceptual rules of architectural history as the Miesian spaces and forms are independent of any content—specific function, program or event—thus they cannot be explained by a ‘functionalism’. The constructive and partly ‘traditional’, partly ‘progressive’ approach of Mies mirrors, or tries to ‘attract’, this contradiction. It ends in the duality of neutral exterior and congested interior, with Koolhaas preferring the typical to atypical, as does Tschumi by simply enveloping fluxing events. This means that both architects, like Mies, exhibit city life through the ‘large glass’. Meanwhile Eisenman uses a semantic colour scheme to show the traces of the conceptual structure of his Aronoff building9 which then becomes a transcription of the architectonic material scheme of Mies’s Barcelona Pavilion. The ‘making of architecture’ appears also at Libeskind, in a similar manner to the Miesian one, in the form of revealing the 8 As Tafuri and dal Co wrote about it: ‘the building was presented in the absolute schema of its own technical nature. As construction, it does not speak of formal orders; only perfect adherence to the productive system can guarantee that the linguistic reduction does not itself become a style.’ (Tafuri-Dal Co, 1980:153-154). 9 Aronoff Center for Design and Art at the University of Cincinnati, Ohio, 1988-96. COUNTER-ATTRACTION, OR, HOW TO MIES-READ ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY FOR OUR OWN PURPOSES 102 conflict between (classical) craftsmanship and (modern) standardization: as Mies simultaneously admitted that we cannot satisfy the needs of a mass society with medieval means and tried to make such a (neo-classical) craftsmanship-quality10, Libeskind created a completely handmade, that is individual, reading machine but had to make industrially a (copying) writing machine for architecture.11 The sophisticated, or let’s say autonomous, handling of Mies’s materials and structures lead Libeskind to dedicate his City Edge project to the ‘father’ of the four architects. Each of the buildings of the four authors is simultaneously more, as the space and the viewer are guided, directed and controlled, and much less, as ‘embodying the 10 See Mies’s essay ‘Baukunst und Zeitwille’ [Architecture and Time] from 1924. Short version in Der See Mies’s essay ‘Baukunst und Zeitwille’ [Architecture and Time] from 1924. Short version in Der Short version in Der Querschnitt 1924/4. Extended version in (Neumeyer, 1986:303-306). 11 Three Lessons in Architecture. The Pilgrimage of Absolute Architecture (Libeskind, 1992: 37-45). Three Lessons in Architecture. The Pilgrimage of Absolute Architecture (Libeskind, 1992: 37-45). The essay was first published in 1985. Figure 8. Daniel Libeskind: ‘Never is the centre: Mies van der Rohe Memorial’ for the City Edge project, Berlin, 1988. (Papadakis, Cooke, Benjamin, 1989: 202). ZOLTÁN BUN 103 absolute absence’, than the Miesians. On the one hand the spirally interweaving slabs of Koolhaas, the hovering bridges of Tschumi, the in-between valleys of Eisenman surrounded by column-grids and the vertical and horizontal voids of Libeskind are all reference systems which, on the other hand, thanks to their complicated or chaotic delineation, do not hold the secondary classicality or monumentality any more. They search for the disciplinary convergence or specificity somewhere else—maybe betraying the moderate Mies with a more sensationalist or didactic method of exploiting the idea of modern chaos. While Eisenman misreads Mies as ‘text’ (against the historical Mies-image) and Koolhaas as a hidden essence behind aphorisms (against contemporary exhaustion or the using up of Mies), they are talking about the same problem and—from this point of view—with the same attitude, no matter if the product is formalist or typical. Meanwhile Mies is being ‘modernized’ or updated: his harmony, simplicity, transparent transparency, rationality gains new meaning through distorting and individualizing. So Mies is the practical origin and Mies is the theoretical goal: but isn’t this counter-attraction too much of an interpretation? COUNTER-ATTRACTION, OR, HOW TO MIES-READ ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY FOR OUR OWN PURPOSES 110 The link to geography and anthropology It was precisely the team leader of zone 2, Lixa Filgueiras, who, in 1986, makes a new contribution to what we know of the antecedents of the survey, particularly in relation to the anthropological and geographical fields which came to influence the work carried out by the teams assigned to the northern zones of the survey. Filgueiras offers a description of the cultural entourage existent at the time in the Escola de Belas Artes do Porto [Oporto Fine Arts School], directed by Carlos Ramos, who was in charge of selecting the members of the teams assigned to the northern zones. At the time, Orlando Ribeiro had held a series of master classes in that school and accompanied the students on a trip with the purpose of completing the field work for their class. Orlando Ribeiro was the geographer who published Portugal, o Mediterrâneo e o Atlântico [Portugal, Mediterranean and Atlantic] (1945), a remarkable portrayal of the country which influenced the geographical division of the country into six zones for the purposes of the survey (Ollero, 2001). Later, the same students participated in the fieldwork and surveys in the north of the country, and also collaborated with the team of Jorge Dias, the most important Portuguese anthropologist, of the time, working on the material that he had made collected. Filgueiras (1986) adds that another immediate consequence of these influences was that for the first time, a dissertation on architectural theory was accepted for the completion of a degree in Architecture. Titled ‘Urbanism: A Rural Theme’, the work was defended by Filgueiras in 1954 and resulted in his selection as coordinator of the team assigned to zone 2 of the survey. Following in the footsteps of Lixa Filgueiras, Arnaldo Araújo, another member of zone 2 team, presented in 1957 the “the second different thesis”, addressing the issue of rural habitat (Filgueiras, 1986). It is based on this work that Pedro Vieira de Almeida and Maria Helena Maia (1986) raw attention to the fact that it is precisely Arnaldo Araújo who, together ALEXANDRA CARDOSO AND MARIA HELENA MAIA 111 with Viana de Lima, Fernando Távora and Filgueiras, will launch an integrated study for an agricultural community in Trás-os-Montes, which was presented by the CIAM team from Porto at the Tenth Congress in Dubrovnik in 1958. Ana Tostões (1997[1994]:165) highlights the importance of this work, directly connecting it to the ongoing survey “for the revision of international method condensate in the approach of the authentic forms of life as an inspiration of architecture”. For Manuel Mendes (1987), the approach to the survey by both teams assigned to the north is characterised by a more anthropological and less functionalist vision of space and of architectural forms. Later, he will defend that “…the report adopts a territorial approach forms of settlement and life-styles brought about by the take-over of space: land, built environment, buildings” (Mendes, 1990). This characterisation, however, is one that Pedro Vieira de Almeida and Alexandra Cardoso specifically restrict to the analysis done by the zone 2 team in the region of Trás-os-Montes, an analysis that “largely hinged on ethnological approach”. The authors also consider that this work is the “the richest and most complete of the whole survey‘” (Almeida and Cardoso, 2002). The relations with the political regime The final press proof of Arquitectura Popular em Portugal was presented to Salazar himself, and he was particularly interested in the results of the survey conducted by the Architects’ Union. In fact, according to Nuno Portas (1978), “a curious coincidence of misunderstandings or false pretences” have contributed decisively to the achievement of the survey. While the government believed this action would reinforce the aspects of Portugueseness in national architecture, the architects intended instead to “trap an explosive documentary” which would demonstrate the existence of as many ‘traditions’ as there were regions. The same idea is conveyed in the preface to the 2nd edition of Arquitectura TRADITION AND MODERNITY. THE HISTORIOGRAPHY OF THE SURVEY ON REGIONAL ARCHITECTURE 112 Popular em Portugal (Direcção da AAP, 1979), further reinforcing the claim that the equivocation have been intentionally kept by the architects to ensure the continuation of financial support from the government, crucial to the implementation of the project. The same text also clarifies the role of Francisco Keil do Amaral, who launched the idea of the survey and given a decisive impetus to its realisation when he was president of the Architects’ Union. According to these authors, due to the state of disrepair of many of the surveyed structures, Keil felt a great sense of urgency in the completion of the survey and the registering of the country’s vernacular architecture. At the same time, Keil also considered that this survey would constitute an important instrument by which to debunk the myth of a single “national style” (Direcção da AAP, 1979). Following the fall of the political regime in 1974, there is a marked increase in the interpretations of the survey as an act of resistance against the architectural impositions of the regime. In fact, the very notion that the regime held some sort of ‘architectural control’ is not consensual. Following Pedro Vieira de Almeida’s discussion on this point, the existence of the imposition of a specific architectural language by the Salazar regime has been questioned (Almeida and Maia, 1986; Almeida, 2004). This author argues that the idea of a “national style or styles”, as imposed by the government, constitutes a basic misunderstanding of the Inquérito. According to Vieira de Almeida, the discovery of diversity and the absence of specific aspects of Portuguese architecture is a direct consequence of the fact that the teams departed for field work “militantly willing to read this diversity, everything that in the national territory was irregular and disjointed”. This is the attitude that the preface to the 2nd edition of Arquitectura Popular em Portugal legitimises historically through the “deliberate and circumstantial strategy of counter an alleged official interpretation” (Almeida, 2008:108). ALEXANDRA CARDOSO AND MARIA HELENA MAIA 113 The methodology The methodological issue is one of the problematic aspects of the survey and, in addition to the contents of its published results, one of the aspects that has received least scholarly attention, since most texts are limited to merely describing factual aspects of the survey and analysing its antecedents and consequences. Indeed, Vieira de Almeida (1986) is the first author to focus on the survey itself, highlighting the issue of a total absence of common methodology among the survey teams. This will be confirmed by Nuno Teotónio Pereira (1987), one of the team leaders, in the preface to the third edition of Arquitectura Popular em Portugal. In contrast, while recognising the diversity of results, Ana Tostões (1997[1994]:160), basing her argument on a document allegedly written by Keil do Amaral, argues for the existence of a prior plan and guidelines common to all groups, “in order to ensure the unity of the work.” These guidelines were based on the recognition of: “current materials and processes in the construction (…), urban structuring (…), weather influences(…), influence of the economic (…), influences of the social organisation (...), habits, practices and other conditioning factors (…) and expression and plastic value of the buildings and the urban settlement” (Keil do Amaral quoted in Ollero, 2001). Later, Rodrigo Ollero (2001) makes reference to yet another document, which, according to him is also by Keil do Amaral. The document consists of the outline of a letter, written to the teams of the north, which, according to Ollero, “reveals a misunderstanding between the teams of the north and of the south about how the work should be done, especially about the dimension and capacity of what they had to do it, in a way very different from the one that ended up being made”. Indeed, Manuel Mendes (1987 has defended that the work of the teams in the north was differentiated by a careful approach to spatial values, although we have doubts as to whether this was actually a decision taken by the teams, or whether this is the author’s own interpretation. TRADITION AND MODERNITY. THE HISTORIOGRAPHY OF THE SURVEY ON REGIONAL ARCHITECTURE 114 The consequences of the survey Understood from the beginning as being able to provide “the basis for an honest, active and healthy regionalism” (Amaral, 1945), the survey had a great influence on the development of architectural culture in Portugal. Undertaken at a historical turning-point, both national and internationally, when the critical review of some of the principles of the modern movement, the survey will allow modern architects to recover national history and tradition, which “the architects began to use more freely, without feeling they are betraying the basic principles of modern architecture, some traditional elements that were previously considered unclean and therefore proscribed ...” (Pereira, 2000). Indeed, after the survey comes a "third way" (Portas, 1961) which uses tradition in the construction of modernity. Commonly cited examples of this third way are the house of Ofir, by Fernando Távora (Portas, 1961), the house of Afonso Barbosa and HICA’s2 inns by Januário Godinho (Portas, 1978; Tostões, 1997[1994]), the house of Ruben A., by João Andresen (Tostões, 1997). Similarly, the architectural works of Viana de Lima (Fernandez, 1988 [1985]; Almeida and Maia, 1986), Nuno Teotónio Pereira, Nuno Portas, Álvaro Siza and many others are also identified as representative of this third way. On the other hand, Manuel Mendes stated that the study of vernacular architecture has brought a new equilibrium “that had been deformed by the technological enlightenment of the Modern Movement: the harmony between space, architecture and the life of the inhabitants, the relation between transformation proposals and the existing landscape” (Mendes, 1990). The rationalism, functionality and connection with the landscape found by the architects in traditional regional architecture had a decisive influence in the directions taken by subsequent Portuguese architecture. 2 HICA is the way in which the Hydroelectric of Cávado is referred to. ALEXANDRA CARDOSO AND MARIA HELENA MAIA 115 However, the way in which they built modernity in direct liaison with tradition can vary. According to Nuno Portas (1978), there are differences of interpretation between the survey teams, “one more cultural, more instrumental or tactical, the other” that “announce the split, that during the 1960s ... divided the supporters of CIAM from the critics of CIAM”, a division that will come into focus precisely on the relationship between tradition and modernity and in the different manners in which it was understood. Sérgio Fernandez noticed in 1985 that another consequence of the survey was the interest generated among the students of Escola Superior de Belas Artes do Porto (ESBAP), which had as teachers the leaders and other participants of teams of the northern zones. This situation had pedagogical effects (Fernandez, 1988[1985]). The interest in issues related to rural housing came to be reflected in the presentation of several theses, like those of José Dias and Sérgio Fernandez on communities in Bragança and that of José Forjaz about a village in the Alentejo (Almeida and Cardoso, 2002). Moreover, this experience would be exported to Mozambique, where José Dias and José Forjaz had important technical and administrative responsibilities in government and António Quadros, a painter and poet who also hailing from ESBAP, exerted a unanimously recognised cultural influence. Pedro Vieira de Almeida and Alexandra Cardoso (2002) even suggested the hypothesis that “this multi-functional approach with anthropological and ethnographic roots” had come to influence the implementation and development of “communal villages” in Mozambique. In fact, in his thesis, Arnaldo Araújo had already argued that it was in the “effort for analysis and detection of specific needs of specific populations, as well as committed to local proposals for intervention” that could “come to settle the basis of a 'new regionalism' (Almeida and Cardoso, 2002) that the Portuguese architect, without having to abandon or reduce (and without being able to do so) his relations with the universal lines (technical and aesthetic) of modern TRADITION AND MODERNITY. THE HISTORIOGRAPHY OF THE SURVEY ON REGIONAL ARCHITECTURE 116 architecture, should be close to the realities of his people, to interpret their virtues and build a rooted Portuguese architecture” (Araújo, 1957). The interest in popular architecture which characterises the survey has its roots in other countries, such as the avant-garde Catalan group GATEPAC that in the 1930s published several examples of vernacular architecture in its journal (Toussaint, 2009). However, the survey is actually avant-garde in its conception and in its systematic implementation. Note that, as inventoried by Michel Toussaint (2009), both the survey and its publication predated the famous exhibition at MoMA and the book / catalogue by Bernard Rudofsky Architecture without Architects (1964). Arquitectura Popular em Portugal is also present in the bibliographic references of House Form and Culture by Amos Rapoport (1969). The influence of this work in the five volumes of Arquitectura Popular Española [Popular Spanish Architecture] by Carlos Flores published in the end of the 1970s is also well-known. Indeed, Nuno Teotónio Pereira (2000) notes that one of the most immediate consequences of the survey was its contribution to the expansion of the concept of ‘architectural heritage’ to the popular architecture and urban settlements. It is thus undisputed that the Survey on Regional Architecture is an important record of a rural reality that almost immediately disappeared. On the other hand, the photographic collection that had been published, provided a renewed formal repertoire of architectural elements which had the unexpected consequence of being appropriated for tourism and have come to appear in the many ’typical’ constructions in the coastal parts of the country, producing a result antithetical to that originally intended. The current importance of the survey The enormous spolium consisting of notes, drawings and photographs produced during the survey, constitutes an important record of a Portugal that has already ALEXANDRA CARDOSO AND MARIA HELENA MAIA 117 disappeared. As noted by Nuno Pereira Teotónio (1987), this documentation can support approaches directly related to architecture, but may also constitute an important source of information for other research areas such as history, anthropology, sociology and photography. With regard to architecture, the survey “constitutes an important point in the history of Portuguese architectural culture as a historical testament of its time representing a serious challenge to our current critical conscience” (Almeida et al. 2009). At this moment, we have begun to work on a research project within CEAA in the field of architectural theory and criticism, which makes use of the survey as a main working document. The research project, titled Popular Architecture in Portugal: a critical look3 is based in the premise “that the critical discussion of the Inquérito maintains all its relevance, now that the themes of the vernacular and regionalism have again entered into professional discussions”(Almeida et al. 2009). However, the present text has no other pretension other than to begin to objectivise the real contribution to the study and understanding of the survey and its significance in Portuguese architectural history. With this objective in mind, we attempt a first provisional analysis of the historiography of the Inquérito, identifying chronologically the various contributions and their authors. 3 This project, directed by Pedro Vieira de Almeida and funded by FCT [Foundation for Science and Technology] began in April 2010 and will continue until March 2013. A preliminary clarification of the development of this project has been published by CEAA in April, and it also marks the launch of the research work (See Almeida, 2010). In this project, the approach to the survey will be structured and structuring in keeping the study in constant critical dialogue with the architecture of today and in constant interaction with theoretical elements connected to the expressiveness characteristic of some of the modern erudite languages, maintaining in parallel the vernacular and the contemporary. TRADITION AND MODERNITY. THE HISTORIOGRAPHY OF THE SURVEY ON REGIONAL ARCHITECTURE 118 References ALMEIDA, Pedro Vieira de, “Carlos Ramos – uma estratégia de intervenção” in Carlos Ramos, Lisboa: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, 1986. ALMEIDA, Pedro Vieira de, A Arquitectura No Estado Novo. Uma leitura crítica, Lisboa: Livros Horizonte, 2004. ALMEIDA, Pedro Vieira de, Apontamentos para uma Teoria da Arquitectura, Lisboa: Livros Horizonte, 2008. ALMEIDA, Pedro Vieira de, Dois Parâmetros de Arquitectura Postos em Surdina. O Propósito de Uma Investigação, Edições Caseiras / 14, Porto: CEAA, 2010. ALMEIDA, Pedro Vieira de, et all., Project application presented to FCT in February 2009. ALMEIDA, Pedro Vieira de; CARDOSO, Alexandra, Arnaldo Araújo, Arquitecto (1925-1982), Edições Caseiras / 1, Porto: CEAA, 2002. ALMEIDA, Pedro Vieira de; MAIA, Maria Helena, “As décadas pós-Congresso. Os anos 50” in História da Arte em Portugal.14: Arquitectura Moderna, Ed. by Pedro Vieira de Almeida and José Manuel Fernandes, Lisboa: Alfa, 1986. AMARAL, Francisco Keil do, “Uma iniciativa necessária”, Arquitectura, 2ª Série Ano XX, nº 14, Abril, 1947. ARAÚJO, Arnaldo, Formas do Habitat Rural, Norte de Bragança. Contribuição para a estrutura da comunidade, CODA, ESBAP, 1957. A ARQUITECTURA Popular em Portugal. Sindicato Nacional dos Arquitectos, Lisboa, 1ª edição, 1961 (2 vol.) 2ª edição; Associação dos Arquitectos Portugueses, 1980 (1 vol.); 3ª edição: Associação dos Arquitectos Portugueses, 1988 (3vol.); 4ª edição: Centro Editor Livreiro da Ordem dos Arquitectos, 2004 (2 vol.). In this paper, all citations refer to the 4th edition. DIRECÇÃO da AAP, Preface to the 2nd edition of A Arquitectura Popular em Portugal, Lisboa: Associação dos Arquitectos Portugueses, 1979. FERNANDEZ, Sérgio, Percurso – Arquitectura Portuguesa 1930/1974, Porto: Edições da FAUP, 2ª edição, 1988 (1985). FILGUEIRAS, Octávio Lixa, “A Escola do Porto (1940/69)” in Carlos Ramos, Lisboa: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, 1986. FRANÇA, José Augusto, “Raul Lino. Arquitecto da Geração de 90” in Raul Lino, Lisboa: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, 1970. FRANÇA, José Augusto, A Arte em Portugal no Século XX, Lisboa: Bertrand, 1974. MENDES, Manuel, “Os anos 50 (Entre a autonomia criativa do ‘novo’ e a crítica ao espaço indiferenciado, ao modelo transferível – os compromissos realistas do ‘estilo internacional’)”, RA – Revista da Faculdade de Arquitectura da Universidade do Porto, year I, n. 0, October, 1987. MENDES, Manuel, “Porto, The School and its Projects 1940-1986” in Architectures à Porto, Brussels: Pierre Mardaga, 1990, p. 42-84. OLLERO, Rodrigo, “Letter to Raul Lino”. Cultural Identity in Portuguese Architecture. The “Inquérito” and the Architecture of its Protagonists in the 1960’s. PhD Thesis. University of Salford, School of Construction and Property Management, 2001 (1 + 3 vols). PEREIRA, Nuno Teotónio, “Reflexos Culturais do Inquérito à Arquitectura Regional” in J-A, n 195, March/April, 2000, p. 69-71. PEREIRA, Nuno Teotónio, Prefácio da 3ª Edição de A Arquitectura Popular em Portugal, Lisboa: Associação dos Arquitectos Portugueses, 1987. ALEXANDRA CARDOSO AND MARIA HELENA MAIA 119 PORTAS, Nuno, “A Evolução da Arquitectura Moderna em Portugal: uma interpretação”, in História da Arquitectura Moderna of Bruno Zevi, 2nd volume, Lisboa: Editora Arcádia, 1978. PORTAS, Nuno, “Arquitecto Fernando Távora: 12 anos de actividade profissional”, Arquitectura, 3rd series, 71, Lisboa, July, 1961. RIBEIRO, Orlando, Portugal, o Mediterrâneo e o Atlântico, Lisboa: Livraria Sá da Costa, 7th edition, 1998 (1945). TÁVORA, Fernando, O Problema da Casa Portuguesa, Lisboa: Cadernos de Arquitectura, 1947. TOSTÕES, Ana, “Modernização e Regionalismo 1948-1961” in Arquitectura do Século XX. Portugal, Ed. by Annette BECKER, Ana TOSTÕES and Wilfred WANG. Portugal-Frankfurt 97, 1997, p. 41-53. TOSTÕES, Ana, Os Verdes Anos na Arquitectura Portuguesa dos Anos 50, Porto: FAUP, 1997 (1994). TOUSSAINT, Michel, Da Arquitectura à Teoria e o Universo da Teoria da Arquitectura em Portugal na Primeira metade do século XX, Doctoral Thesis in Architectural Theory, Lisboa: Universidade Técnica de Lisboa – Faculdade de Arquitectura, 2009. Acknowledgments This article was completed in 2010 as part of the project The ‘Popular Architecture in Portugal’: a critical look (FCT: PTDC/AUR-AQI/099063: COMPETE: FCOMP-01-0124-FEDER-008832). TRADITION AND MODERNITY. THE HISTORIOGRAPHY OF THE SURVEY ON REGIONAL ARCHITECTURE 126 in the essay (De Solá-Morales, 1997:59). This is a position corresponding to Gianni Vattimo’s weak optimism from 1995: “Once the architect is no longer the functionary of humanity, nor the deductive rationalist, nor the gifted interpreter of a world view, but the functionary of a society made up of communities, then projection must become something both more complex and more indefinite.” (Vattimo, 1997:147). Weak architecture like weak thought faces the loss of universal values and the directing role of theory, but does not give up the right of theory to interpret, reflect or create projects. Cool Discipline The essay written by Robert Somol and Sarah Whiting was first published in the architectural magazine Perspecta in 2002.7 Its structure is very different from the previous one, as it is more didactic in argumentation. Somol and Whiting are practicing architects and they write a manifesto not an academic study. The authors’ intention – to break with the theoretical approach to architecture – is suggested right in the title: Notes around the Doppler Effect and other Moods of Modernism. Mentioning a physical phenomenon adumbrates a pragmatic approach to the discipline, and the text is relevant to this upbeat. The proposal – cool discipline – is described in contrast to the dominant paradigm (within American academic circles) of architectural autonomy or criticality. The medium length article is divided into four parts, each having a subtitle, expressing the contrast between the past and the proposed future: from critical to projective; from index to diagram; from dialectics to Doppler; from hot to cool. The structure is adjusted to the mediatised era of the 21th century – short parts, clear oppositions – so it is not surprising that the authors’ central reference point is Marshall McLuhan, from whom they also borrow the concept of the discipline which moves from hot to cool in its character. 7 Due to its provocative character the essay was later reprinted in several collections and anthologies, and discussed in different forums both in Europe and in the United States. MARIANN SIMON 127 Somol and Whiting connect the attacked interpretation of architecture to Colin Rowe, Manfredo Tafuri and their contemporary followers, K. Michael Hays and Peter Eisenman.8 According to the authors Hays and Eisenman are the propagators of an architecture which is based on the autonomy of the discipline. They claim that architecture is a cultural product, but to preserve the critical position of architecture it must have autonomy, consequently autonomy is the precondition of architectural engagement. This kind of architecture – as Somol and Whiting interpret – is based on representation and signification, even if the main protagonists often try to convert it into indexes which are not determined culturally.9 The result of this approach is a hot discipline, which deals with a method-based way with details and connotations, while its autonomy and criticality remove it from architectural practice. As a consequence this kind of architecture is worked, belaboured, difficult and complicated. What Somol and Whiting propose instead is cool discipline, based on performance and practice. With this second pairing – the way of method-acting as opposed to performance acting – the authors turn again to film, performing arts and to the media. The authors’ key concept is that architecture belongs to the performing arts. The light character of architecture as a cool discipline is the result of this shift from creative to performing art. As a consequence cool architecture is instrumental, projective and pragmatic. It does not represent, it is not for reading, but it is for seducing, becoming, instigating new events and behaviours. Instead of indexes it works with diagrams, which – here the authors quote Gilles Deleuze’s words – “impose a particular form of conduct on a particular multiplicity.” (Somol-Whiting, 8 This concentrated attack against K. Michael Hays and Peter Eisenman was interpreted by some later reflections as reckoning with father figures, which might explain its radicalism. “I do not think it is a coincidence that so many of the protagonists of the currently proffered alternatives to ‘criticality’ are former protégés of Eisenman, or at least figures at the edge of his circle.” George Baird, ‘Criticality and Its Discontents’ in William S. Saunders (ed) The New Architectural Pragmatism. A Harvard Design Magazine Reader 5. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis – London, 2007, p. 140. Baird’s essay was first published in 2005. 9 They refer to the interpretation of Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilion by K. Michael Hays from 1984, and to Peter Eisenman’s analysis on Le Corbuiser’s Dom-ino house from 1979. WEAK ARCHITECTURE - COOL DISCIPLINE 128 2010:196). The reference to the Doppler Effect – the perceived change in the frequency of a wave that occurs when the source and receiver of the wave have a relative velocity – acts as the explanation of this multiplicity but on a strictly rational level in tune with the whole pragmatic turn. Cool architecture is relaxed and easy; it never looks like work. It has got rid of knowledge and forms is based on shared norms, principles and traditions, and as a “discipline it is not a fixed datum or entity, but rather an active organism or discursive practice, unplanned and ungovernable” (Somol-Whiting, 2010:197). This projective practice does not look back and does not criticize the status quo, but it looks forward and believes in the intelligence of design – or design intelligence as Michael Speaks propagated this shift later in the same year (Speaks, 2010). Design intelligence involves information and impulses of a wide range, it “focuses upon the effects and exchanges of architecture’s inherent multiplicities: material, program, writing, atmosphere, form, technologies, economics, etc” (SomolWhiting, 2010:196). The architect, as a design expert, always reacts differently according to the actual input and circumstances; this creates the lightness and adaptability of the performance. However something is missing: the directing principles are left hidden. Even if in the last sentence of the article the authors try to mark themselves off from “capitulation to market forces”, this restriction of architects’ competence to design can’t be interpreted other than as an escape from responsibility.10 Market forces and the pirouette of a ballerina Concepts of weak architecture and of cool discipline both bring relief for architecture, because they leave behind certain former principles, known and inherited from the avant-garde period of modernity, which have become 10 “Setting out this projective program does not necessarily entail a capitulation to market forces, but actually respects or reorganizes multiple economies, ecologies, information systems, and social groups.” ibid. p. 202. MARIANN SIMON 129 obsolete over time: linearity, homogeneity, universal truth, or the architect as a functionary of humanity. This new era of modernity has really changed the role of the architect, whose position has been weakened since Le Corbusier closed his manifesto with the words – architecture or revolution – in 1923. This weakening has also had an effect on the autonomy of the profession. In an essay which dates back to 1991 de Solá-Morales also dealt with the topic of autonomy and concluded in the possibility of a partial autonomy, presented in the events of time. He does not give up cultural reflection as the autonomy and an aim of the profession, but stresses its partial and volatile character. His example for this experience is the situation where a performance touches us: “Like the tale told by the actor on the stage, like the unexpected pirouettes of a graceful ballerina” (De Solá-Morales, 1997c:90). The editor of de Solá-Morales’s collected essays was Sarah Whiting. In her introduction she appreciates de Solá-Morales who “favors humanism but a nonconforming humanism” (Whiting, 1997:xiv) and defines his position in the relationship between theory and practice as succeeding “in establishing a critical collaboration with practice.” (Whiting, 1997:xv). The two concepts – weak architecture and cool discipline – are similar in character: both are light, easy and relaxed. However when comparing them we find that the second one is even lighter; cool discipline leaves behind not only the universal theory, but also the possibility of any kind of relevant theory in the name of practice. Somol and Whiting call for a projective practice, which is evaluated by its performance, but they do not mention what it is for the whole.11 This kind of cool performance – without autonomy and without responsibility – is not that of the artist, but of the expert. And I go further: it is not about 11 In his essay Reinhold Martin expresses this deficit clearly: “We might ask the affirmative, projective practitioners of the ’postcritical’ just what sort of world they are projecting and affirming in their architecture and in their discourse.” Reinhold Martin, ‘Critical of What?’ in: William S. Saunders (ed) The New Architectural Pragmatism. A Harvard Design Magazine Reader 5. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis – London, 2007, p. 159. The essay was first published in 2005. WEAK ARCHITECTURE - COOL DISCIPLINE 130 the artist or the expert. We may need experts who do their job in an easy and relaxed way, but not without autonomy, criticality and engagement, even if they repeatedly need to define their goals and groundings. The puzzles are not eliminated. MARIANN SIMON 131 References BAIRD, George (2007) Criticality and Its Discontents. In Saunders W.S. (ed.) The New Architectural Pragmatism. A Harvard Design Magazine Reader 5. Minneapolis – London, University of Minnesota Press, p. 136-149. The essay was first published in 2005. DE SOLÁ-MORALES, Ignasi (1997) Weak Architecture. In Differences. Topographies of Contemporary Architecture. Writing Architecture Series. The MIT Press, p. 57-71. The essay was first published in 1987. DE SOLÁ-MORALES, Ignasi (1997b) Introduction. In Differences. Topographies of Contemporary Architecture. Writing Architecture Series. The MIT Press, p. 3-11. DE SOLÁ-MORALES, Ignasi (1997c) From Autonomy to Untimeliness. In Differences. Topographies of Contemporary Architecture. Writing Architecture Series. The MIT Press, p. 73-90. The essay was first published in 1991. HAYS, K. Michael (2000) Architecture Theory Since 1968, Columbia Books of Architecture, The MIT Press. HELLER, Agnes (1990). Can Modernity Survive? Cambridge: Polity Press. MARTIN, Reinhold (2007) Critical of What? Toward a Utopian Realism. In Saunders W.S. (ed.) The New Architectural Pragmatism. A Harvard Design Magazine Reader 5. Minneapolis – London, University of Minnesota Press, p. 150-161. The essay was first published in 2005. SOMOL, Robert – WHITING, Sarah (2010) Notes around the Doppler Effect and other Moods of Modernism. In STYKES, A.K. (ed.) Constructing a New Agenda. Architectural Theory 1993-2009. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, p. 188-203. The essay was first published in 2002. SPEAKS, Michael (2010) Design Intelligence. In STYKES, A.K. (ed.) Constructing a New Agenda. Architectural Theory 1993-2009. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, p. 206-215. The essay was first published in 2002. VATTIMO, Gianni (1997). The End of Modernity, the End of the Project? In LEACH Neil (ed.) Rethinking Architecture. A reader in cultural theory. London-New York: Routledge, p. 148-154. The essay was first published in 1995. WHITING, Sarah (1997) Subjectifying the Modern. In Differences. Topographies of Contemporary Architecture. Writing Architecture Series, The MIT Press, ix-xvii. WEAK ARCHITECTURE - COOL DISCIPLINE 132 133 ANA LÍDIA VIRTUDES Assistant Professor, Department of Civil Engineering and Architecture, University of Beira Interior. Researcher at CEAA | Arnaldo Araújo Research Center (FCT uRD 4041) and at LISA (Lab. of Interdisciplinary Spatial Analysis). She is currently principal research of the ESAP Project Smart Plan (previous phase) – Survey of the architectural matrix of stilt-houses of river banks in Portugal: valuation opportunities within the urban policies. (ESAP/2015/P27/CEAA). ALEXANDRA CARDOSO Architect (FAUP, 1994). Integrated researcher of Centro de Estudos Arnaldo Araújo (CEAA), R&D unit 4041 (FCT); Director of CEAA (2003-2010). Researcher of the projects: The "Popular Architecture in Portugal." A Critical Look (2010-2013); Portuguese Participation in CIAMX (2014); Southern Modernisms (2014-2015) and Photography, Modern Architecture and the "Escola do Porto": Interpretations on Teófilo Rego Archive (2014-2015). Principal Investigator of the project Architecture News. 70's (May 01 - December 31, 2015). Last related publications, include the books To and Fro: Modernism and Vernacular Architecture (ed.) and Dois Parâmetros de Arquitectura Postos em Surdina. Leitura Crítica do Inquérito à arquitectura regional. Cadernos 3 and 4 (all with M.H. Maia and J.C. Leal, 2013) and the papers Portugueses in CIAM X (with M.H. Maia, 2014); Southern AUTHORS Architectures (with M.H. Maia, A. Trevisan and J. Couto, 2015) and Parallel Paths (with M.H. Maia and A. Trevisan, 2015) ANDRÁS FERKAI MSc Arch., dr. Habil, DSc Art History, is professor of the Institute for Theoretical Studies at Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design Budapest. After a decade in architectural practice, he became the editor of the Hungarian Architecture magazine then a freelance researcher. From 1993 he teaches architectural history courses on graduate and post-graduate levels and acts as a tutor in doctoral schools. His field of research includes themes of the Avant-Garde and Modern Movement, intellectual history of modern Hungarian architecture, as well as preservation of modern monuments. He published 13 books, contributed to 36 edited books, the total number of his publications is over 170. He had been the member of DOCOMOMO International (ISCRegisters) between 1996 and 2002. IVÁN I. RINCÓN BORREGO Is PhD architect and professor of the Department of Theory of Architecture and Architectural Projects at the University of Valladolid since 2004. He is member of the GIR Architecture and Cinema at the University of Valladolid. He is researcher integrated of the CEAA – Centro de Estudos Arnaldo Araújo ESAP, Porto. He 134 defends his PhD Thesis entitled Sverre Fehn: The Natural Shape of Construction in 2010. He has collaborated with several publications; 12 Edificios de Arquitectura Moderna en Valladolid (2006); Arte & Paisagem (2007); 21 Edificios de Arquitectura Moderna en Oporto (2010); Arquitectura, Símbolo y Modernidad (2014). Since 2006, he has also lectured in different national and international Universities. JOSEFINA GONZÁLEZ CUBERO Architect. Doctorate in Architecture in 1996. Her PhD Thesis studies the urban work of Le Corbusier. Professor in Architectural Projects since 1997 in the Department Architectural Theory and Designs at the University of Valladolid's Technical School of Architecture in Spain, where she teaches on graduate and posgraduate levels. Her research interests are the relationship between architecture and other arts. Coordinator of Architecture an Cinema Research Group and colaborator researcher of the Centro de Estudos Arnaldo Araújo, CEAA. MARIA HELENA MAIA Graduate in History/Art and Archaeology and PhD in Modern Architecture and Restoration. Currently she is full professor and deputy-director of ESAP, director of CEAA, FCT R&D unit 4041 and principal researcher of its Architectural Studies research group. She was principal investigator of the FCT project Popular Architecture in Portugal. A Crítical Look (2010-2013) and the ESAP project Portuguese participation in CIAM X (2014). Currently she is researcher of the FCT projects Photography, Modern Architecture and the "Escola do Porto": Interpretations on Teófilo Rego Archive (2013-2015) and Southern Modernisms (2014-2015) and the 2015 ESAP projects News of Architecture. 60’s (principal investigator) News of Architecture. 70’s and Dramatic Architectures. Last related publications, include the co-edition of To and Fro: Modernism and Vernacular Architecture and the books Dois Parâmetros de Arquitectura Postos em Surdina. Leitura crítica do Inquérito à arquitectura regional. Cadernos 3 and 4 (all with A. Cardoso and J.C. Leal, 2013). Prizes: (1) José de Figueiredo 2008 of Portuguese National Academy of Fine Arts by rhe book Património e Restauro em Portugal (1825-1880); (2) Ignasi de Lecea 20072008 of Public Art & Design Observatory – Universitat de Barcelona by the co-edition (with M. Acciaiuoli and J. C. Leal) of the books Arte & Paisagem and Arte & Poder. MARIANN SIMON MSc Arch, PhD dr. Habil is associate professor at the Department for Urban Planning and Design, Corvinus University of Budapest. After eight years in practice she turned to teaching and research work focusing on contemporary architecture and theory at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics which she left in 2014. She teaches courses on graduate, post-graduate levels and acts as a tutor in doctoral schools. She has organized several national and international symposia, and has led seven large research projects financed by home and international funds. She has published more than 140 studies and articles. She was the member of the international research group ‘Theory, Criticism and History of Architecture’ granted by FCT between 2009 and 2012. NOEMÍ VICENTE MARTÍN Architect. Degree in Architecture of the University of Valladolid's Higher Technical School of Architecture in Spain, 2006. Collaborated with several architectural offices in Valladolid from 2006 to 2008. Working since 2008 as a local government architect. PEDRO VIEIRA DE ALMEIDA Lisbon 1933-Matosinhos 2011. Architect, PhD in Architecture, Professor of Theory of Architecture at the Escola Superior Artística do Porto (ESAP). He was researcher (1999-2011) and director (2010-2011) of Arnaldo Araújo Study Center (uID 4041 FCT). He had an an extensive work as architect, urbanist and in the field of Architectural Theory and Criticism. RÉMI PAPILLAULT Docteur en histoire de l’EHESS et architecte diplômé de l'Ecole des monuments historiques de Chaillot, Rémi Papillault a participé à des études et des projets en sites sensibles, comme l'étude pour le secteur sauvegardé de Toulouse, les aménagements des espaces publics du site classé de Pierrefonds, la création d'un belvédère sur Garonne au parc Raymond VI, ou la transformation des anciens Abattoirs de Toulouse en Centre d'Art Moderne et Contemporain. AUTHORS 135 AUTHORS Comme maître-assistant à Ecole d'Architecture de Toulouse et enseignant invité à la Faculté d’Architecture de Cagliari, il enseigne le projet en deuxième et troisième cycle et en tant que chercheur il a publié des recherches et articles portant principalement sur les rapports entre la ville et l'architecture au vingtième siècle, autour des projets de Léon Jaussely pour Barcelone, de Candilis, Josic et Woods pour Toulouse le Mirail et de Le Corbusier, à Chandigarh, en Inde. Parallèlement à ses recherches sur le patrimoine du XXème siècle et à son implication en tant qu’administrateur de la Fondation Le Corbusier, il est en charge de l’étude pour le Grand Projet de Ville de Toulouse le Mirail. Publications récentes : 2008 Le Mirail, mémoires d’une ville, avec Stéphane Gruet, Ed. Poiesis. 450p. 2008 Le Team X. Les bâtiments et les théories qui les font naître : le cas des opérations de logement collectifs à grande échelle en Europe, Actes du Colloque. Avec B. Fayolle Lussac, Recherches et publication. Ed MSH Bordeaux. 200p. 2007 Jaipur une ville neuve en Inde, Ed Thalia, avec Alain Borie et Françoise Catalàa, Paris, 280 p. 2007 Chandigarh, Portait de ville, Institut Français d’Architecture, Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine, 72 p., Paris. ZOLTÁN BUN He received his MSc architecture (2005) and PhD (2012) from Budapest University of Technology and Economics. He studies architectural theory linked directly to practice and interdisciplinary techniques especially from 1968. He participated in several research programs such as OTKA 72671 under the title ‘Active theory. The changing role of architectural theory in the Millenium’. His essay, ‘Between Analogue and Digital Diagrams’ received EAAE Best Paper award at the 2008 ’Changes of Paradigms in the Basic Understanding of Architectural Research. Architectural Research and the Digital World’ conference in Copenhagen. He is a senior architect at Firka Architecture Studio, Budapest. 142 1