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Architectural representation as a medium of critical agencies

2008; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 13; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/13602360802023989

1466-4410

E. Altürk,

Art, Politics, and Modernism

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. For example: Richard Meier's buildings reference the formal vocabulary of historical architectural modernism; Peter Eisenman's series of house projects are often presented as representations of their own design processes; any building that aims at some level of political propaganda, references that political agenda within a specific context (Albert Speer's German Pavilion for the 1937 Paris World's Fair would be an abundantly clear example); the shopping-mall type is usually seen as the symbol of consumption and the economic system that induces it; many projects are claimed to be generated by their programme to the extent that they reflect it, as in the case of historical functionalism. 2. I use 'image' as an overarching term for convenience since I do not articulate these various types of representation in detail. Although it is perfectly justified to refer to most of these representations as images, some resist this notion. For instance, it is not precise to refer to 'working drawings' as images since they are not analogous to their object (as the term 'image' suggests). They are, rather, highly codified notations. 3. R. Evans, 'Architectural Projection', in, E. Blau and E. Kaufman, eds, Architecture and its Image, Four Centuries of Architectural Representation, Works from the Collection of the Canadian Centre for Architecture (Montreal, Canadian Centre for Architecture, 1989), p. 21. 4. To give a commonplace example, one's experience of Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao is almost never without some expectation caused by the images and footages one has seen before her/his encounter with the building. This is also true for many cities, such as New York, Paris, London and so on. 5. Evans, 'Architectural Projection', op. cit., p. 19. 6. See M. Foucault, This is not a Pipe, J. Harkness, trs. and ed. (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1983): first published in French as, Ceci n'est pas une pipe (1973; preliminary manuscript published in 1968, in Les Cahiers du Chemin). 7. Walter Benjamin argued that in the age of its technological reproducibility the original artwork is destined to lose its authority: see W. Benjamin, 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction', in, H. Arendt, ed., Illuminations: Essays and Reflections (New York, Schocken, 1969), pp. 217–252; first published in German, Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit (1936). 8. See J. Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, S. F. Glaser, trs. (Ann Arbor, The University of Michigan Press, 1994): first published in French, Simulacres et Simulation (1981). 9. On the various agencies of architectural drawing especially, see E. Robbins, Why Architects Draw (Cambridge, MA, The MIT Press, 1994). 10. Although it is not included in what I focus on as the architectural representation, data representation and software specialising in this deserve appropriate consideration because they seem to be very beneficial in complex projects for regulating information traffic and accessibility. 11. R. Evans, The Projective Cast: Architecture in Its Three Geometries (Cambridge, MA, The MIT Press, 1995), pp. 118–119. 12. This is also true for the rapid zooms-in and zooms-out on drawings, enabled easily by software, which actually calls for a reassessment of some conventions in architectural representation organised with reference to scale. Conventionally, the notion of 'architectural scale' establishes some standards for architectural representation. Referring to a set of scales up to 1:500, it presupposes that a work of architecture and its relationship with its immediate surrounding can be generated and represented within this set. Each scale within this set (ie, 1:500, 1:200, 1:100, 1:50, 1:20, and 1:5, 1:1) is used to provide certain specific information. 13. Diana Agrest argues that 'the self-referential behavior of axonometric projection characterizes the initial moments of modernist project, where it became a preeminent mode of visualization, decentering the subject from the perspectival model.' She quotes El Lissitzky arguing that the 'Perspective limits space; it has made it finite, closed. The world is put into a cubic box.' See D. I. Agrest, 'Representation as Articulation between Theory and Practice', in, S. Allen, Practice: Architecture, Technique and Representation (London, Routledge, 2000), p. 166. 14. Evans, 'Architectural Projection', op. cit., p. 19. 15. Ibid. 16. See J. Crary, Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, MA, The MIT Press, 1990), p. 1. 17. Here I borrow the remark from K. Michael Hays: 'Overview: Critical Practice and the Neo-Avantgarde', a lecture in the seminar series 'Critical Thought and Projective Practices', Delft School of Design (07.10.2005). 18. See R. Venturi, D. S. Brown and S. Izenour, Learning from Las Vegas (Cambridge, MA, The MIT Press, 1977); R. Koolhaas 'Learning Japanese' and 'Strategy of the Void', in R. Koolhaas and B. Mau, S,M,L,XL (New York, The Monacelli Press, 1995), pp. 88–125 and 602–603; R. Somol and S. Whiting, 'Notes around the Doppler Effect and other Moods of Modernism', Perspecta, 33 (2002), pp. 72–77. 19. M. Cormack, Ideology (Ann Arbor, The University of Michigan Press, 1992), pp. 12–13. 20. On architecture's relationship with culture, see especially Diana I. Agrest, 'Design versus Non-Design', in Architecture from Without, Theoretical Framings for a Critical Practice (Cambridge, MA, The MIT Press, 1991), pp. 30–65; first published in Oppositions, 6 (1976). 21. In this construction, beauty was a 'reasoned harmony of all the parts within a body, so that nothing may be added, taken away, or altered, but for worse.'; see L. B. Alberti, On the Art of Building in Ten Books, trs, J. Rykwert, N. Leach, and R. Tavernor (Cambridge, MA, The MIT Press, 1988), p. 156; this first appeared in Latin, De re aedificatoria (1485 [c. 1452]). 22. See especially L. Hilberseimer, Grossstadt Architektur (Stuttgart, Verlag Julius Hoffmann, 1927). 23. See M. Tafuri, '"Radical" Architecture and the City', in Architecture and Utopia, Design and Capitalist Development, trs., B. L. La Penta (Cambridge, MA, The MIT Press, 1976), pp. 104–124; first published in Italian, Progetto e Utopia (1973). 24. G. Deleuze and F. Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1987). 25. Agrest, 'Design versus Non-Design', op. cit. 26. This doesn't necessarily mean that such architectural practices do not have precedents at all. One may see Piranesi's work in this light, especially with the discourse developed around his engravings in recent decades. 27. For various projects by Alison and Peter Smithson, especially the entry to CIAM 9 in Aix-en-Provence (1953) and the Golden Lane Housing (1952), see, A. Smithson, ed., Team 10 Primer (Cambridge, MA, The MIT Press, 1968) and A. and P. Smithson, The Charged Void: Architecture (New York, The Monacelli Press, 2001); also, A. and P. Smithson, 'But Today We Collect Ads', Ark, 18 (1956), pp. 48–50. See also R. Venturi, D. S. Brown and S. Izenour, Learning from Las Vegas, op. cit.; Casabella, 359–360 (1971); Archigram, 1–9 (1961–1974); P. Cook, ed., Archigram (New York, Princeton Architectural Press, 1999); Utopie, 1–2/3 (1967–1969); M. Dessauce, The Inflatable Moment: pneumatics and protest in '68 (New York, Princeton Architectural Press, 1999); H. Hollein, 'Alles ist Architektur', Bau, 1/2 (1968), p. 2. For various writings and photomontages (especially Ueberbauung Wien 1960, Flugzeugtrger in der Landschaft 1964, Transformation 'Erzwaggon' 1963) by Hans Hollein, see http://www.hollein.com. For a discussion on Architettura Radicale, as well as for bibliography and images, see P. Navone and Bruno Orlandoni, Architettura 'Radicale' (Segrate-Milano, Documenti di Casabella, 1974). For R. Koolhaas, E. Zenghelis, with M. Vriesendorp and Z. Zenghelis, 'Exodus or the Voluntary Prisoners of Architecture', 1972, graduation project at the AA School of Architecture in London and competition entry to Casabella's 'The City as Meaningful Environment', see Casabella, 378 (1973), pp. 42–45 and R. Koolhaas and B. Mau, S,M,L,XL, op. cit., pp. 2–21. For R. Koolhaas, with M. Vriesendorp and Z. Zenghelis, 'The City of the Captive Globe', 1972, Project for Manhattan, see R. Koolhaas, Delirious New York, A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan (New York, The Monacelli Press, 1994;first published in 1978), pp. 294–296. 28. Superstudio was a group of Florentine architects. It was founded on 04.11.1966 by Adolfo Natalini and Cristiano Toraldo di Francia. The group also comprised Gian Piero Frassinelli, Roberto Magris, Alessandro Magris and Alessandro Poli (1970–72). Arguably, the most active years of Superstudio were 1968–1973, and the group was disbanded in 1986. 29. Superstudio, 'Superstudio: Discorsi Per Immagini', Domus, 481 (1969), pp. 44–45. Il Monumento made its first public appearance earlier that year in the Autumn, at the Trigon Biennial in Graz, and was published in the catalogue of the biennial, Trigon 69. The project was later developed in storyboard format: Superstudio, 'Deserti Naturali e Artificiali', Casabella, 358 (1971), pp. 18–22. 30. Archizoom Associati was a group of Florentine architects. It was founded in 1966 by Andrea Branzi, Gilberto Corretti, Paolo Deganello and Massimo Morozzi. The group later also comprised Dario Bartolini and Lucia Morozzi. 31. Archizoom Associati, 'Città, Catena di Montaggio del Socialel: ideologia e teoria della metropoli', Casabella, 350–351 (1970), pp. 43–52; 'No-Stop City: Residential Parkings, Climatic Universal System', Domus, 496 (1971), pp. 49–55. 32. For an outstanding articulation of the utopian paradigm see especially F. Choay, The Rule and the Model: on the Theory of Architecture and Urbanism (Cambridge, MA, The MIT Press, 1997); first published in French, La Règle et le Modèle (1980). 33. Mario Gandelsonas argues that after the 1950s architecture was confronted with a highly illegible city due to the outcome of traumatic urban restructuring in postwar Europe and America. Thus, architecture discourse underwent a critical shift regarding the position of the architectural subject: namely, from production to reception, from writing to reading. M. Gandelsonas, 'The City as the Object of Architecture', Assemblage, 37 (1998), pp. 128–144. 34. R. Evans, 'Translation from Drawing to Building', AA Files, 12 (1986), p. 15. 35. See http://www.oma.eu 36. S. Boeri, 'Rogue Cities: News from Tehran and Pyong Yang', public lecture, Berlage Institute, Rotterdam (06.02.2007); see also, Domus, 893 (2006).