5.7.5 (haikus for radicals and revolutionaries)

Archigram

a neon revolt
of impermanent design
culture sleeps awake

Superstudio

fanciful cynics
unite cities and cosmos
love and fear are free

(an ode to the May '68 student revolt)

the youth of Paris
who "forbidden to forbid"*
freed the red brick soul

...and a warning to Tech students
(in jest)

chained faculty will
land you in prison orange
get your degree first



*Il est interdit d'interdire (it is forbidden to forbid) was a slogan of the 1968 riots.

Plutôt la vie was another slogan of the '68 unrest and came from the title of a poem by André Breton. The basic translation of the phrase is "life instead" or "life rather."

Finding Home Amid Change.

"Speak your mind, even when your voice shakes." Maggie Kuhn.

The quote in spray paint is not the original quote, but the sentiment is loud and clear and remains true to Kuhn's objective. I do not know the story behind this photo, but it reminds me of the east end of Austin as developers moved to quickly provide housing for the growing population. They were worried about population and not people (re: Aldo Van Eyck quote in following text). Humble family homes stood abandoned as people's shared history waited to be demolished beneath a wrecking ball.

Aldo Van Eyck was concerned with the way in which the West had disconnected from their own history. As western nations industrialized, the rural-to-urban shift changed architecture from a place of home and hearth to a sometimes crowded, uncomfortable place.

Well-planned cities adapt to population shifts. The rest are strained as people push the infrastructure to near collapse.

Austin, Texas, is not my hometown, but it is that place that I associate with home. In the years I lived there, I was able to watch Austin grow as the dot.com boom rose and fell and rose again. Large numbers of people moved from Silicon Valley to what was then dubbed the New Silicon Valley in the Austin-Round Rock metro. The new residents brought a change in lifestyle and culture. With that, the city changed. The streets and bypasses were not designed to withstand a huge influx of people. The city was not handling the population shift with ease. Time will tell. As Van Eyck said “People live there, not population.”

Developers bought up the east end for a steal. The people who defined the city were displaced as luxury apartments stood like steel skeletons against the skyline. It was a sad process. I would think that this was the same process that New York City went through in the 20th century. SoHo was once a big thorn in the side of those against gentrification. The artists and galleries that once defined the area were largely forced out. Now, trendy boutiques are the raison d'être in SoHo. For those of us who know nothing else and nothing prior about her history, SoHo is a lovely space with nice little gems of architecture. However, I bet the people who knew the former SoHo can still find that one place that still defines the space for them. They can find home amid progress. This progress (or that necessary evil known as change) does not determine how we relate to a city.

As with any place you love, you gravitate towards the places that have a history for you. My favorite little iced coffee shop in Austin is now a trendy bar. But that's okay. The exposed brick wall takes me right back to the first day I stepped foot in there. I climbed a barrier fence at a construction site the last week that I lived there. On one side was a ma and pop diner. On the other side was a multi-million dollar mixed-use structure. In between, was that place and time where I still had control of how I viewed Austin. People need history; they need a sense of place. In that void, we create our own history and our own understanding of time and place.

It could be argued that responsible architecture anticipates change, but I lean towards Van Eyck’s philosophy that what architecture should do well is “assist our homecoming.” All change takes time to process. In that, we need to provide spaces that allow people to be individuals and not simply mass inhabitants.

Another stab at understanding autonomy (structuralism via Eisenman)

Earlier in this course, we were introduced to the concept of an autonomous architecture through the methods and ideology of the Italian Tendenza. The concept was vague to me, but intriguing. I really did not know how an autonomous architecture would work or why a person would want to remove the historical context. In the essay, “From Deep Structure to an Architecture in Suspense: Peter Eisenmann, Structuralism, and Deconstruction,” by Patin, I was able to get a better grasp on why (or at least, how) an architect would remove his architecture from himself and the societal context imposed upon his architecture.

I will play the polemic and say that the act of removing any need for human response and context reminds me of the quickening changes in architecture and technology. We move ourselves further and further away from the need to respond or interact on a one-to-one basis. Some students spend the first two years developing a niche and continually manipulate, distort and violate whatever initial truth was in that personal discovery. In a respect, we spend our studios in search of our own House 1, 2, etc. The process is a similar process. We create from what we cast away as often as we are create from what we cleave to in architecture. I suspect the same is true for practicing architects. I’m not sure there is an art or beauty in that and I’m not sure there needs to be.

A self-described cynic and someone we’ll probably discuss in our workshop on star-architects, REM Koolhaus said in an interview for Wired Magazine that:

“People can inhabit anything. And they can be miserable in anything and ecstatic in anything. More and more I think that architecture has nothing to do with it. Of course, that’s both liberating and alarming.”

Perhaps what we see today- this act of withdrawal- is less about architecture and more about human expression. Despite the movement toward removing the individual- maybe what we infused was the human aspect and what we removed was architecture.

Autonomy and Memory in Unstable Political Climates

The presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina is formed by a tripartate power-share between the ethnic Bosniaks, Serbs and Croatians. The pervasive tension and instability of the political structure fractures any sense of forthcoming stabilization. In the reality of living in a region where war and fighting are an ever-present threat, the ideology of an autonomous architecture is appealing.

Consider that neo-rationalist theory developed in concept during the interwar period and was further shaped by the destruction wrought on Italian cities by the Axis and Allied powers during WWII. These ancient cities were devastated by bombs and warfare. The task of rebuilding Europe after WWII was handled differently depending on the sphere of influence. The West developed the Marshall Plan to attempt to help with the stabilization and reconstruction. Italy accepted the aid, as did many other European nations.

Several nations that had formed under the splintering of the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires in the early 20^th century did not have the buffer of distance or ideology from the Soviet Union to accept the aid. Joseph Stalin controlled a large portion of Eastern Europe, not by actual right of law, but with force of fear and control. This sphere of influence formed the iron curtain that is synonymous with the Cold War.

“I don’t invent, I remember,” Aldo Rossi

In his essay, Michael Hays states that “Rossi assumes history as an uninterrupted event to be studied and explored…” Personally, I believe that architecture should relay some sense of what events shaped it. Florence would not be Florence without the Renaissance. Similarly, removing the past from architecture and placing that building in a historical vacuum is somewhat idealistic. What is interesting to me is this idea of typology and taking an element of the past and expounding and developing that key truth to fit a new space and time. I think this worked well in Italy and many of the other nations as they rebuilt in post-war Europe.

Back to Bosnia and Herzegovina where pre-war architecture was a synthesis of the religions and struggles that shaped the region. A relatively short occupation by the Byzantines infused Eastern Orthodoxy and a rich complexity of color and geometry to the architecture and region. The Ottoman Turks brought onion domes and magnificent mosques and palaces. The Austro-Hungarian Empire provided a third influence- the West. All meshed to create a unique culture and tension to the region.

"Dance with the devils in beautiful buildings..." The Veils, Vicious Traditions.

WWII ripped an irreparable tear in the fabric of the region. The differing peoples and ideas that had lived together in a tenuous accord were now destroying each other. I do not believe that architecture can flourish in a time when there is no stability. Ideas can flourish (as in interwar Italy). Architecture does not. While the regime of Joseph “Tito” Broz was removed from Stalin (they despised each other), Tito was not handing out civil liberties left and right. He was a charismatic leader and considered a war hero. He did save Yugoslavia from Stalin in a way that no other leader of Eastern Europe achieved. The price for that sliver of freedom under autocracy was mounting ethnic tension and government suppression.

Communist architecture in what was then Yugoslavia was neither rational nor functional. Whole families lived together in tiny apartments in these massive blocks of concrete. These families often shared that tiny apartment with complete strangers. Their only privacy was a screen fashioned from pieces of fabric or wood panels. This is where architecture fails. When the politics of the time necessitate suppression of the very basic expression of comfort, architecture fails. This is where I see a certain rationale to autonomous architecture. If the politics and place are so extreme as to wipe clean the entire concept of architectural memory, then yes, I prefer autonomy. Give it nothing or give it something, but don’t kill it.

The 3 year war between the Bosniaks and the Serbs (1992-95), brought an unprecedented cruelty to the region. The Serbs systematically slaughtered Bosniak men and boys in acts of genocide. The cities were, once again, destroyed. The whole infrastructure collapsed. These beautiful cities that were infused with a great and rich history were leveled and left in ruin. Moreover, the ethnic tensions continue to destabilize the nation. The current government’s policy of power-sharing provides no safety or security.

The question becomes how do you rebuild in a climate of instability? Particularly when the first buildings necessary are government facilities and housing. Do you choose an architecture autonomous of the history or do you choose an architecture that builds off memory and typology? While tempted by the intrinsic honesty of autonomy in any region where extreme politics prevail, I feel this region has such a rich architectural history that it would be unjust to remove that. Perhaps, a typological approach would be the kindest. Move on, but with a knowledge of that which preceded.

If interested, here is a link to a New York Times article on the recent elections: Ethnic Wins in Bosnia May Cause Deeper Splits.

Photos: Beg's Mosque, Sarajevo, Mimar Sinan, 1531; Communist-era housing, Sarejavo, in ruin after the Bosnian War; Concept for the Sarajevo Concert Hall; Urban Future Organization, 1999.