Panorama of the architectural thought. First part.

Chapter 7 of the book ON THE CURRENT SITUATION OF THE ARCHITECTURE: GENEALOGY, DIAGNOSES AND INTERPRETATION. ISBN: 84-96377-37-7 2005. Debates for doctors’ formation. José Ramón Moreno Pérez, Rafael González Sandino, Carmen Guerra de Hoyos, Mariano Pérez Humanes, Carlos Tapia Martín, Félix de la Iglesia Salgado. Teachers and Researchers ETS Architecture Seville.

José Ramón:

As in the interventions of other days, what I am going to tell you is also about a revision of questions that we have seen previously.  In fact, the basis of the approach of the conference that I gave in Segovia (1), was actually Lesson III of the Programme of Theory of Architecture: Panorama of the Contemporary Architectural Thought (2). This conference has been useful to me to revise certain positions. The interest of bringing it to the Seminar is because it traced a metapanorama of the Thought of the current Architecture, since it’s impossible today to think that “a” panorama exists but however, what rather exists is a panorama of panoramas, and it is also necessary to work with opposed panoramas, partial ones, enjambed ones, etc.

I had carried out another approach, in parallel to the revision of Lesson III of the programme, and it was to outline Architecture as a cultural phenomenon.  Architecture cannot find a deep understanding of what has been its happening or its present situation, if it is not framed in the Cultural production that goes, as Zygmunt Bauman has studied, from the great void of the lack of last foundation’s appearance with Illustration, until our present. With a clear fracture, that is also very explanatory of what is happening to Architecture at the present time, basically originated in the second part of the XXth century, but essentially focussed from the decade of the 70’s until our days. Fracture that Modern Culture has worked from the Illustration until this moment, the loss of the Category of Space and, more so, the Category of orderly Space, as an instrument for -first of all-, to idealise the social, economic and productive conflicts and -secondly-, to think of alternative utopics to the existing ones.

Therefore, the approach that overflows and redoes what had been Lesson III, consists of two questions: in the first place, to affirm that today it is only possible a metapanorama and not a panorama, as complexive and globalizing this could be on a whole and secondly, to settle that the meaning of the phenomenon of Architecture, or of the architectural production, should be carried out in what we know in the West, from the Illustration to our days, as Culture. Later we will enter in the role that carries out Culture in the Project of Illustration, an later on, in Modernity.

I had found a title that Zygmunt Bauman proposed, using George Steiner’s sentence that frames what this metapanorama of Architectural Culture would be. The title is: “Maximum impact. Instantaneous obsolescence: Recycling”. The first two, maximum impact and instantaneous obsolescence, are extracted from diagnosis that Steiner makes of Culture, starting from the decade of the 80’s.  Culture is led and assembled to produce always a maximum impact, accompanied by an instantaneous obsolescence, and this would be what would characterise the cultural products of this last part of the XXth century. The title is completed with the Recycling because, if cultural production is like we have stated, at least there is an attitude that we could call of resistance that would be the Recycling;  understanding this as the construction of a world, in parallel to the world of Culture that works with the materials left instantly behind, looking for a succession of meanings, contents and extents in them that are obviously not understood as such in the moment they take place, in the moment of maximum impact. Besides, all this concerns the protagonism of the media and therefore, connects with what we have seen in the last sessions.

There is a second consideration, immediately bound to the above-mentioned, and it is that there is no production of knowledge that doesn’t remit directly to the definition of a position. That’s to say, it was not only to outline an exchange of doubts and of approaches of revisions, but also to establish a framework to preserve or to discard.  Framework that somehow, could include what is given in our intellectual production.  An intent of establishing some rules, as small as they are, on which we would be able to rationalise the connections, that we already know, exist, in an absolutely evident way. To define a metapanorama means then to be positioned inside that metapanorama that is traced. Therefore, there is no consideration, merely objective from the point of view that is assumed, but it is rather wanted to be committed, or that this approach becomes subjective to the prejudices that are managed.

Also there exists a third consideration. The power to make a metapanorama in the current situation is not easy for several reasons. The first one, is the acceleration that the analysis production of the present situation has suffered in the last 10 years. In this time we have covered an enormous quantity of land and of articulations that before were -to say it somehow- in fallow, waiting for first partial studies to be made, and then these connected in studies of a superior level. Fortunately, in the period of ten or fifteen years that I have worked in this field, there has taken place, first, an access to this information, and secondly, a familiarisation with these sources and finally, a medium map-tracing of the area.(3)  -term in fashion now- which is no more than a grouper to trace maps of this situation.

Therefore, the metapanorama departs from an underlying structure, of an infrastructure without which it is impossible to make, mainly if it doesn’t want to become a truly ideological product with lack of a material consideration that supports it.  Because if it is true that the analysis of the present situation has taken place, in the last 10 years and with a growing rhythm, great part of it is ideological and mercantile analysis. Reason why, more than trying to be just to what is happening, -and I don’t mean that this doesn’t take place, because it takes place evidently but in an indirect way-, what we are looking for, in a clear way, is to define a position regarding the market and the cultural and architectural production in which we are immersed.

Something that we have done, and which allows us a certain advantage, regarding this mere analytic or theoretical production of the last ten years, is -contrarily to what is happening-, an interpretation of the architectural production. It is not critic absence, although the approach of a current critic would be an approach at least committed and delicate, but absence of the interpretation of the architectural production, where we could find, in an absolutely defined and committed way, what is Architecture of the last 15 or 20 years, specifically in the works. The interpretation has allowed us the access to a deep understanding, of most of the important works that have taken place in these last years and therefore, we have registered or analyzed -not to say interpreted-, the master lines on which architecture has been developed within the limits of the field of work of the last decades.

There is a wedge (coda), at the end that refers to what assumes this metapanorama, as a revision of the Spanish architectural culture and therefore for the Andalusian one, and we will see as conclusions of the situation are reached, that are as solid as depressing.  From what the clear dialectic is being affirmed between global and local that we manage at the present time, and the unbalance towards the local one, in which our culture has declined now.

What I will outline has two parts: One that is a Diagnosis and a second part that is a Panel of Symptoms of Architectural Culture on which that diagnosis is based.  We will first outline a diagnosis.  If there is a figure that describes the situation of Architecture of our present, it is that of a crossroad. A crossroad in the sense of the definition of space-time that, located in a trajectory, actually is a place where an already covered way converge with some ways that are still to be covered. That implies, therefore, a specific position in the route that has been covered, as the way to Modernity has been in Architecture, but evidently it also brings with it a situation, in which one reacts with a certain attitude.

Attitude defined by a sequence of qualifications: perplexity, fundamentalism, meant as a regressive fundamentalism, in the sense of reaffirming what has been left behind;  the fact of not knowing how to say what is happening or the fearlessness, facing the uncertainty of the situation of not knowing well what our position is, neither what we want, rushing forward waiting to see what happens.  A fearlessness that is evidently never promising, but that rather comes from the obligation to find the way out of this impasse which can no longer be upheld.  Therefore, the crossroad is the figure that represents this attitude, this situation and this position inside what has been the one on the way to Modernity.  We already knew it, and we are able to think about what comes next:  “How did we arrive to this situation?, or, paraphrasing that scene of “The Godfather”, “How did we arrive here?”.

We proposed an intuitive talk, three years ago when the programme was began (2).  We said that we had arrived to this situation due to the concurrence of two factors. The first of them is the exhaustion of the impulse that constituted the Modern Project that had traced a passage in which Modern Architecture has moved, first with the Vanguard, then with the Modern Movement, later with the International Style, after with the Revision of the 50’s, later with the NeoBrutalism, etc., to arrive to Postmodernism that would also be a definite stage of this impulse that constituted the Modern Project, that has now ended.

What we were planning, intuitively at that moment, is that there obviously was an environment, a guideline referred to Architecture, which could not be understood without it.  The Modern Project is already controversial in its definition itself.  We know that it is not the same the Modern Project defined by Heidegger than the one defined by Rorty, than the one defined by Habermas. That’s to say, the consideration of Modern Project is by itself conflictive, but we could understand that the Category to which refers the Architecture was a Category of superior range to that of Modern Architecture, which also led and was broken by a terrible structure, in which Modern Architecture has been included during a long time, and that, partly, is one of the causes or the determinants why we have arrived to the present situation.  That terrible condition of Architecture has not been any other than to maintain an external understanding, independent of Architecture as a phenomenon itself, inside the scenario of Modernity in the last century and also part of the XIXth century. Because Architecture has played the role of a self-sufficient phenomenon, is largely why we have arrived to the current situation.

Obviously this -which was an intuition three years ago-, taken in the context of the studies that have been carried out recently, not only connects with the phenomenon of culture of the Society of Performance, but also connects with the position that made Rafael of the appearance of the Universal, Scientific and Technique Society and also with the social environment par excellence that is the Society of Consumption.

There is one more factor: two connected meanings exist and are therefore bound to the modern project that would actually lead, not only to the development of Modern Architecture in its internal understanding, but to the functionality that this has played during the XVIIIth, XIXth and XXth  centuries.  The two meanings come from the elaboration of both concepts.  On one hand, the concept of Masses, the conversion to the masses -just as Elías Cannetti defined it in its moment-, as a character, as a lively character with some prerogatives, and its development through time, development that connects with studies made by North American historians some time ago, quite ignored and only evidenced as innovating readings of the phenomenon of the Illustration, but today it is clearly understood that they commit as well the present understanding, as what Architecture has been during this period, I refer, for example, to the studies of Anthony Vidler on the appearance of the phenomenon of the participation of the Masses, of the city of Paris, in the revolutionary party, and how this committed, in an absolutely clear way, the statute of functionality of Architecture in the new social and political regime.  That whole development of the Masses that had important episodes among which would be the Domestic Project or the appearance of the use of the Masses with ideological purposes, studied by Canetti, till our days and the transformation of the Masses, in what today is an operating structure in the Society of Consumption.

On the other hand, the concept of Culture, understanding Culture as a production space untied, even inside Modernity, in a very first moment, previous to the whole network with the phenomenon of the productive systems. Culture occupies, in the Society that starts the Illustration, the void produced by the lack of last foundation in the understanding of the meaning of being in the World, and of the World itself.  Culture as a production space -free from systems of material production-, is structured with a basic dialectic that opposes Self-determination from Vulnerability. Behind this dialectic, there are all the dialectical characteristics of the cultural phenomena of our Modern Society. For example, tradition / innovation, order / chaos, etc.  The basic role of Culture, which would not be any other than to serve as agglutinant of the disparity of positions that are established in the project of our Modern Society, or to act already as solvent of those positions countersigned, would be confirmed by the existence of all those dialectics.  This is a potentiality  that goes through all Modernity, and still is absolutely effective nowadays.

A change of polarity takes place, with the beginning of the 60’s, finishing with the Society of Performance, that’s to say, if in the first part of the development of Modern Culture in the XXth century, an affirmation is supreme or it backs up those contents that fix, that agglutinate, that impede somehow the innovation to overcome tradition, in the second part of the century, already in the 70’s, what prevails would be just the opposite. The rupture of the phenomenon, from a theoretical and philosophical point of view, is in the Structuralism and fundamentally in the character of Claude Levi-Strauss, when he proposes Culture as a Structure, with some codes that can be used by those who belong to that Culture.

Having read Modern Architecture in these terms, what takes place is not so much a revision of Architecture, but a reading against all its development. Architecture would begin to show that the phenomenons that are fundamental for it are not in fact the ones the historians have studied, because in these studies there would be an absolute brutal load of ideological influence, which we are not conscious of.

That’s to say, we are not specifically aware of the levels of ideological contents that have traced the Histories of Architecture, besides and specifically, the History of Architecture of the Modern Movement.  Among other things, and like Tafuri made clear in the 60’s, to understand Modern Movement as a “revolution”, and what the historians basically do, in that initial moment, is to support that “revolution”.

This perspective situates again the development of Architecture in a new position, because the most crucial phenomenon for that development would actually not have anything to do with those that History of Modern Movement has highlighted. This happens, among other reasons, because from our present, the first thing that is committed is the concept of History. In fact, if we apply it to certain environments, we could reach some interesting conclusions, because we are not only in a confrontation of power, but also in a confrontation of knowledge, for which, during the 60’s and the 70’s History has played an almost unquestionable role in the projects of Architecture;  passed the situation of the 70’s and reached the current situation, it shows an extraordinary weakness, not only for its own statute but for the function it occupies in the world of the current Culture.

Here there also would be present studies carried out previously, that we have not taken into consideration for many reasons, basically for our distance of historical studies.  For example, when three years ago the project of Architecture of the Illustration was again formulated -by Anthony Vidler-, the one he had outlined fifteen years before, -we are not talking about any phenomenon but of a central phenomenon in Modernity-, what appears as History of the Illustrated Architecture has nothing to do with the role carried out by this in the statement of Modern Architecture, during the twenty years previous to the publication of this book. That’s to say that the application of these approaches, suddenly overflows all the contents and senses that up to now could have been affirmed, regarding the trajectory that goes from the Illustration to our days.  The passage would be to back up a more theorised reading of History, with some philosophical contents and of  much more up-to-date thoughts, and not only a position of renovation of the materiality of History.  That would take us to a focus of History of the Masses and History of Culture, and in it, History of Architecture that would lead to some truly revolutionary visions of the contents and of the function that this carries out regarding this whole itinerary.

The second factor that would take us to this crossroad would be: Architecture has carried out during part of the century a certain function, I don’t refer to a constructive formal function, but to a social, economic an cultural one. In this understanding of Architecture as part of Culture, that intuition that Tafuri outlined at the end of the 60’s is clearly affirmed: Architecture, from the XIXth century is formulating a Social Project, fully assumed, that tells men what should be their values, their behaviours, their goals. Architecture is substituting the role of Culture -that must be one of the reasons why the disaster has taken place, taken from an autonomous explanation of History of Architecture-. That’s to say, if Culture in the first part of the development of Modernity, essentially outlines an unquestionable agglutinative order, Architecture is clearly the most committed part of Culture, because that objective is not reached but proposing an orderly space.

All the utopias formulated by Modernity have the orderly space form and therefore, the architects are not only the technicians, but the ideologists of this Modern Culture that is formulated from the Illustrated Project.

Nobody has discussed Architecture its protagonism in this orderly space of Modern Culture, until in 1950, somebody named José Luis Sert is able to risk that that space is not only being disputed, but occupied by another technique, another resource that continuously displaces and involves Architecture. For that reason, one of the factors that produces the crossroad that we described at the beginning, together with the exhaustion of the impulse of Modern Movement, would be the lack of cultural and social functionality that Architecture has, in relation to the first part of Modernity, since 1960 onwards.

That’s to say, the second factor would essentially be based -seen with historical perspective-, in the following thing: the cultural function that has been carried out by architecture during the first part of Modernity is being disputed, then displaced and later replaced by a technique -let’s call it-, alternative to Architecture itself. Technique that ends up occupying that ordered space to transform it into another thing.  This way, that space is no longer an “ordered space” but a “space of freedom” -the quotation marks have all their meaning-. The technique that displaces Architecture is no other than the media.

All this drags its structural consequences. Basically what has happened is that if Architecture hasn’t duplicated the world, but rather ordered the space of the world, -at best, it has transformed the space of the world in an ordered space-, on the other hand the media carry out an action that implicates, in a structural way, the organization of Culture in the first part of the century, because what they have done is to duplicate the world -this is analyzed by Félix Duque-. A duplication of the world takes place in a real and virtual world.

If in principle we have understood the relationship between the real world and the virtual world as a relationship of absolute duplication, one thing wouldn’t have anything to do with the other, the conclusion being, from the year 2000, that they not only have any relationship with oneanother, but that the relationship of involvement is between both. The reality is never directly experienced, but it is rather and always experienced through the media. Therefore, there has been an expropriation, as Giorgio Agamben explains, of the human’s two basic experiences.  The experience of reality is expropriated from the human being, because he doesn’t have access to that experience but through the media, and this expropriation has been carried out in its most basic sense: the experience of speech has been condemned, the one of language too, it is not spoken but through the media.  As Mariano said in his Thesis (4): neither politics are politics in the media, n either speech nor language are speech and language in the media, neither Architecture is Architecture in the media, but they are rather creations of the media themselves, that make us imagine or believe that that is Architecture, language or politics.  For that reason the expropriation of experience is produced, in a way accepted by all, because it is playing with an artifice that deceives.

The other experience that is expropriated is the one of inhabiting, although less studied and developed by the current thinkers, it is as absolutely central as that of language.  Thereby, both experiences would be two basic languages -we can call them like this-, some thinkers, as Heidegger, propose that both languages belong together.  In my opinion, in the modern world they are not identifiable; habitative language and verbal language are two different things, as well as language of the image. That’s to say, the organicity that Heidegger outlines as alternative to Modernity is breaking down.  What we can affirm is that both, identifiable or not, are expropriated.

If Architecture has been displaced from the ordered space by the media, if it has also been implicated by them in its basic categories as inhabiting, the diagnosis that we could outline then is not that Architecture is at a crossroad, but rather that it actually is at the end of the road, or said otherwise, to make the end of the road positive, what role would there be to play in this situation, such as this is evolving? There are answers, not only one, but multiple answers.  According to that what we outline is a metapanorama, extense answers exist.  However, in the metapanorama of answers that are given, structures can be isolated, not only due to answers that Architecture gives from itself, but also structures according to the function that Architecture could play in that new environment.

Carlos:  In the metapanorama that you are outlining there are two visions. An entry, that describes it with a very specific look, with very powerful and very good questions, reaching exactly to certain points and to an exit that is moving in that width that still doesn’t recognize any particularity, that’s why the question is immediate:  “Has it a way out?”

José Ramón:  We arrive to some conclusions; from them you can continue advancing but there is no restrictive answer, because it also would be a contradiction with regard to the original position.

According to this subject, a question arises, important, not to understand Architecture in its cultural and social role, but to understand it as Architecture.  Matter that we all know but rarely becomes evident: what has happened in the short period that goes from the Illustration to our days, is the appearance of an artificial environment which does the same that virtual environment reproduces after, artificial environment subsumes. -as Karl Marx would say- Nature is introduced as part of that artificial environment, we already know what role Nature plays with regard to artificial environment: it is its infrastructure, its raw material, and immediately, before the development of artificial environment it is fulfilled, it enjambs on a new environment, a virtual one, that subsumes both previous environments, it includes them, it absorbs them and, this would be the novelty, it involves them.

Rafael: The step from the first environment to the second is very clear, it would be what happens from the Illustration: the constructive reason -to name it-, subsumes Nature, that appears as an infrastructure of a superior superstructure that would be the world entirely built by man, for Technical Reason, Nature is the raw material of practical reason.

José Ramón: Superior structure that eventually will be the structure of Modernity that besides, outlines the dialectical one among subjective and objective and therefore, it has the elements of the subjectivity and objectivity.  On one hand, there are the elements of the objectivity:  science, the state and reason; on the other hand, those of the subjectivity: the interior world, the feeling, the unyielding individuality.  For that reason, a superstructure floats first, in ideological principle that ends up becoming a world, subsuming Nature. In this sense, Felix Duke describes this process as a fairy tale: Once upon a time, some characters that…

On the other hand, there are subjective elements. The subjective factor is the one that contributes to the “invention” of humanity.  With this, the long history of infrastructure of the Masses and of Culture, become two rails through which will interact, on one hand Nature and on the other, the superstructure of the Cultured world, both rails continuously interacting -at productive, social, ideological levels, etc.  Why then hasn’t Architecture thought about entering into this long discourse? Discourse that also suddenly replaces the whole architectural production.  For example, when historians select Piranesi and they place him in the centre, we realize that Piranesi is not the centre, but that he occupies another position, if we connect him to other functions that he is carrying out at the moment. This way, all the architectural phenomenon that has been rejected as belonging to a celebration of the social space, when actually it is central for the establishment of what finally will be Modern Architecture and the situation in which we are nowadays.

Returning to our line of thought, we saw how, when the new artificial environment appeared, it used Nature as infrastructure, which basically happens from the XVIIIth century until the middle of the XXth century. This way, the Project begins formulating a superstructure, this superstructure becomes a world, a world that starts building a scenario, to finally end up building the whole scenario, which is the world we are living in today.  In that Project, the role of Architecture is a central role, not only constructive but organizer, ideological, projective, utopian, etc.

But in the short period of two centuries, there not only appears that artificial environment, but also a new environment which is the virtual one, also called postindustrial or tele-environment.  This new environment directly means for Architecture the ceasing of the function that this one had previously carried out, an indispensable function in the previous environment. So, exhaustion of the objectives and of the trajectory of Modern Creation appears, not only because it is exhausted.

Something interesting appears, when Architecture passes from the category of Transformation to the category of Modification;  in fact what Architecture reveals is that the scenario is built, and what remains to be done to Architecture is its maintenance.  In this sense it is brilliant the position of the Italians, or the one of Oriol Bohigas when they say: “The Plan is finished and now it is only necessary to improve what we already have”.  This explains all the solutions that are given then:  let’s work, let’s improve, etc.  The pattern is outlined, the conditions are given, the scenario is built, then let’s improve the situation.  This was a solution that still operated with the continuity of the existence of the artificial environment.  But over this situation, the following process enjambs -we are talking about the thin twenty year-old fringe that goes from the 60’s to the 80’s-, it is verified that there is a new environment in motion and besides, this new environment is not going to take one century to come about, but 20, 15 or 10 years.  Moreover, this environment -like we’ve said before-, duplicates the reality and not only subsumes the artificial thing but also the natural one.  Here subsume doesn’t mean that it incorporates it neutrally, but it rather transforms it in its own functionality.  This way, Nature won’t be the same thing for artificial environment than for virtual environment, not only for what has happened to Nature in the interval -many things have happened-, but because its operative structure is totally different in an environment or in another.

NOTES

1. Conference “Maximum impact. Instantaneous obsolescence, Recycling”. Imparted in the course held in Segovia, 2001.
2. The referred programme is about the subject Theory of Architecture: “The disseminated thought. Maps against prints”, of the ETSA Seville, elaborated by Pofessor J.R.Moreno and imparted by Professors M. Pérez Humanes, C. Tapia Martin and C. Guerra de Hoyos, and that continues the educational and investigator line begun by Professor R. González Sandino.
3. There is a deliberate selection of this whole production in our Texts of Theory and Architectural Composition.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Culture as Praxis – Baumann, Zygmunt – Paidos – Barcelona – 1999

Después de 5000 años: la revolución – Zevi, Bruno – 1968

Masse und Match – Canetti, Elías – Galaxia Guttemberg – Madrid – 1960