Panorama of the architectural thought. Symptomatology. Third Part.

Chapter 10 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:

We concluded last session applying to the description we had made, of the joint of Contemporary Architecture, Jorge Wagensberg’s formula, that established the relations between Architecture as a system and the media’s environment, seeing that Architecture was not adapted to what was the new environment of the media. Facing this situation, Architecture as a system has reacted with a double attitude, two plans, back to back. Both would be located in a present position, they don’t outline that their proposals are pointing to a situation to come, but rather they are located as exclusive answers to the problem at the moment. We must understand the present like an extensive time pointing towards a certain future and towards a certain past, but, evidently, the central category we play with is, using the words of the title: instantaneous (1).

These two attitudes would be characterized, the first one by a capture of enclosed fields of the chaos, (because it is understood chaos as what constitutes our present situation) that, immediately,  tries to settle a principle of order of that enclosed field that has been defined and that  doesn’t pursue to organize it entirety, but the establishment of a territory under control of the operation, that begins with a capture and is continued with the establishment of an order in this territory, and that serves as material base for the constitution of a foundation that is not built beforehand, but in the same process where the work of Architecture is generated.

The other one, on the contrary, would be an attitude fully overturned to a relationship present-past, a question that has been developing as tradition from the 60′s until our days, but that would change in one point, regarding that trajectory of the range of topics:

First of all, till now there hasn’t been full conscience that in the present one can update the past, – using a word that I don’t like -, that is to say that the present would be the moment of a call from the past where this one would be lived to the full, – speaking from a merely architectural conception and not from a cultural one -, even superior to the reconstructed moment. But that Architecture would also have in that call, the power of making cohabit, in a counter-historic operation in the same work, moments of different origin, of different temporary dating. This cohabitation would constitute, the same as in the other case, the material base on which to build a foundation that becomes only present in the representation of the work itself.

Evidently, both techniques are different, not only opposed, since the nature of the materials that are used are totally different. As observed in the second attitude, the genealogical one that would be nearer to an eminently architectural tradition, while the first one, the chaotic one, would be in an absolute extroversión of the disciplinary attitude, so absolute that in certain moments it can dissolve the disciplinary limits. But as the decade of the 90′s advances, we can find a cross between both attitudes, in some works that partially rehearse an encounter, or a mixture of both procedures. There are even techniques used by genealogy that  have been imported from the first attitude and viceversa.

However, the second attitude would know perfectly that the past finishes in the present, that is to say that one has lived a historical time that has a limit. That doesn’t mean that that historical time doesn’t have lessons to teach in the present, or what is to come, but somehow there is conscience of an end of time and category regarding the past. All that  would be represented by Bruno Zevi’s article “after 5000 years, revolution”, where, besides making a series of reflections of the past regarding the present, there is an enumeration of contents of the past that would be absolutely outstanding for the present. The first attitude, that of the captors of fragments of the chaos, would be exemplified very well by Charles Jencks’ article “A non linear Architecture.”

This fracture evidences clearly the recognition from Architecture itself that there are two opposed environments, one of them overlapping the other: On the one hand artificial environment and on the other hand the environment of the media. And it is  understood nowadays, that a possibility of improvement of these partial readings doesn’t exist in a unique globalized or condensed reading of both of them. Although it is also certain that there is a full ambivalence between both attitudes. So much of the present would be the operations like that of Rafael Moneo, belonging to a genealogy of the past, as attitudes like that of Enric Miralles, belonging to the position of capturing fragments of chaos. The double valuation would be shaping the complexity of that panorama where an improvement of these partial readings is impossible, finding in the media a common place for their presentation.

With this the diagnosis would conclude and it would begin with a second part of the topic that would consist in the description of the symptoms that has taken me to outline this diagnosis.

The glance with which we face reality, the world we are living in, cannot be, first, a simple glance, because our conscience of the past and of history prohibits us to do so. Secondly, it cannot be a simple look, because the continuous proliferation of events and the existent interaction between them prohibits us to do so. Third, neither can be a look that uses a unique temporary value, but a look where the time of present, past and future are blended as definition of what we see.

Therefore, we would need a certain orchestration to be able to contemplate the world that surrounds us in connection with Architecture. So, as you already know, we outlined in Lesson III (2), a kind of a subterfuge so that people would understand what we were speaking about and we said: let us imagine a computer screen that allows an interaction, it would not be a screen for a merely receptive attitude, but rather, according to our own desires or prejudices, we would be able to request things. It would be a screen, formed by superimposed layers that could also interact to our will, layers of different depth or content. Besides, this screen moves in time, it should not be a static screen but an extraordinarily dynamic one as consequence of the cultural characterization we have made of our present: “Maximum impact, Instantaneous obsolescence and Recycling.”

If we watched this screen, with a look that almost would coincide with a natural glance on Architecture, the first thing that we would verify is the proliferation of names that describe Architecture. If we started today to mention them, a big parenthesis of outstanding names of Architecture of our present , in their characterization, would appear. The field would be very extensive, from the most “renovating” architects, – between quotation marks because the categories would be no longer those -, being the whole line that starts up with Peter Eisenman, Daniel Libeskind, or, passing to the national environment, Enric Miralles, etc. On the other hand these would be architects with a conservative position, – I mention them generically, with no intention to classify-, Rafael Moneo, Alvaro Siza, etc. Therefore, the environment in which we move would be an extensive environment, but through names. Names that, in this duplication where virtual environment takes place, they immediately become marks, because their relevance is not internal, but external of Architecture.

This position that could be structural in other moments, now becomes an absolutely necessary relationship, in such a way that if the name doesn’t exist as a mark, it is not recognized and therefore, it would not have a verifiable existence. This duplication name-mark behaves as the mark of any production object to be sold nowadays, like a car or a sports trademark. That is to say, in the first panorama we understand that Architecture is fully integrated in that environment of the media and is behaving as a communication technique.

The second layer that we can detect is very close to that of name-mark and very related with it, because what would define these name-marks  would not be but a group of works (buildings, constructions) associated to themselves. This group of works is not static, it doesn’t belong to a certain moment but rather they configure development vectors, changing in their own trajectory, with important drifts – we will see what makes them change -, but that would mark clearly, like a sign in the screen, the characterization of that name-mark we are talking about. Those vectors engaged in works, in a succession of works that, in some cases, define a clear alignment and, in other cases, a clear drift as time advances.

Such vectors formed by works, would have a characterization that comes from the  position that is made of the work itself. What kind of work is it? In the first place, with a previous lack of parameters on which to be generated. There is no basis as a reference, there are no established principles, since discipline is more a field with which to discuss, to be indexed, but never something that marks a solid principle to follow or to stick to.

Then the work establishes three definition levels, basic to understand this relationship between work, vector and definition of the architectural mark which we are referring to. In the first place, each work defines, in an absolutely clear way, what the limits are and what is the nature of what we call Architecture. For example, when Santiago Calatrava begins his first works, he is introducing a new definition of Architecture that commits all the Modern definitions, or even Classic definitions that have been made previously, because he breaks down the limits settled by a process that has taken 500 years, and that has separated two techniques of transformation of reality so important as engineering on one hand and architecture on the other.

This procedure could also be identified with other architects, as Miralles for example. Therefore, even the architects that we could consider more conservative, more disciplinary, in their turn are forced to carry out this definition. For that reason, one of the most outstanding features in Moneo’s works, would be specifically in a very precise definition of the encounter, – already impossible to reject -, between Classicism and  Modernity, in a procedure of continuous synthesis that would finish evidently in the celebration of genealogy of the past in our present. He contemplates, for example, the impermanence of the work of Architecture, he speculates about its materiality, he contemplates social as well as technique orchestration of the work, within a speech that has a direct relationship with tradition but that overcomes it from far. With the result that, as much in a case as in the other, a definition of what understands each other of Architecture should be carried out.

And this definition is made in the work of Architecture itself, not as a parallel speech, but integrated in the work itself. In fact, the form of the speech external to the work, in most of these architects, is the interview.  The interview is the commented dialogue of somebody who has faced a work, – therefore, full of prejudices-, managing to get from its author an explanation of that interpretation that has been made on the work itself.  On the other hand, when theoretical speeches take place they overcome from far this definition of the nature of Architecture itself and opinions are settled, not within an architectural field, but cultural. For example, Miralles talking about Giacometti’s paintings, or Moneo when he talks about History and Criticism, or Eisenman speaking of the relevant condition of the structure of the DNA as formal generation, not for Architecture but in general. Always with a line of argument where Architecture enters, as a non decisive factor, but determined by that speech.

The second consideration would consist of a definition, also through the work, of the architectural orchestration that is being used. The work itself represents or contains an argument on the instruments and the use that is made of them to generate the work itself. That orchestration wants to have an innovative role that transforms it into an outstanding sign of what is its aspect in the media, that is to say, an outstanding sign of architectural fashion.

Finally, the third level of definition of each work would be in the use that is made of them. The work has instructions for use for the inhabitant, in many cases those instructions for use are clearly imposed, in other cases they are limited to advise a certain housing practice in itself. But in no way it is understood that the work responds to a predetermined way of housing, rather, it would be a reinvented way regarding the one that has been deduced from the readings of our reality, of our world. Then, Architecture would be fully defined as the performance of principles and of its own procedures.

We will go further to one more layer. The third layer, – and it is a fundamental element of the current architectural culture -, would consist of procedures that want to reduce the diversity of Architecture itself.  I refer to the procedures that are set in motion from the 80′s until our days, that look for a common characterization, that can be of appearance, of procedures, of objectives or of results, and that serve to reduce diversity, – even chaotic for some – that is manifest in the current panorama. However, it is not a simple classification or understanding desire of that reality, but rather this desire, this position, this procedure to end up being implied with the creator’s strategies.

I mean that these classifications can simply take place in the concern of certain observers who want to reduce this diversity to some supposed common features, but the classification can also be made by creators who want to establish certain professional fields of work under their control and, therefore, they try to clarify special characteristics available for their followers, for people who succeed them. As it can be verified in the analysis of the congresses “ANY”(3) that have taken place since 1991 till 2001, where the established following rules can be found:

First rule: The totally directed search of Architecture in its desire to meet up with Culture and for that reason the excessive presence, as never before, of arguments of social sciences as philosophers, anthropologists, film directors. So many opinions have never been called for, different from Architecture, when speaking of the nature of Architecture itself, this demonstrates a need to establish a relationship between the architectural production and the cultural production. What needs to be developed  with this is that Architecture adapts itself, in a full way, to the processes of diffusion of the media of the thought and, therefore, to the dominion of the market in a wide sense.

Second rule: In those encounters, as copies of that third layer, the search for reduction of diversity would be led by most of the architectural marks, by creators that define the universe of Architecture in the last decades, who try to find common characteristics. As today we are already speaking of all that happened, in the Congresses ANY, no common conclusion was established. Therefore, what has taken place is in fact some kind of  margins of knowledge that, recycled, could be used in this reduction of diversity, but as a procedure started by the creators themselves, it is unable to find what they say they are looking for.

Third rule in this search of diversity reduction: Against the possibility of the establishment of structures or of structural levels that would reduce diversity to common layers, what happens is that the structure laminates in many planes. Planes that don’t allow a specific definition, but rather that they make float the different reading levels that can be made. That is why it is impossible to establish a relation of codes or of regulations, between significance and significant. It is impossible to establish a connection between material nature and space nature, they are laminated.

The procedure I propose to be able to leave this hole of which apparently it is impossible to get out of, would be the “coded” reading – now it is possible -, of each work, from those planes of the laminated structure, to specify that, in each one of the works, a procedure would be continued where that structure is not simply crossed as a base, as a foundation, but as a space connection between components of those diverse planes.  This has been made in an elementary way by Felipe Colavidas and Isabel Bravo, also elementary by José María Montaner, less elementary by Charles Jencks, starting from the equation New Science = New Architecture, proves a range of topics that could be structural, when explaining not the whole crossroad of current Architecture, but only a part of that crossroad, the one that would correspond to the first attitude, that of the captors of fragments of that chaos where we are.

I recite the epigraphs of Jencks so you can understand for yourselves: “From the matter to the mother”, “The cinematic section”, “Fractal Landform”, “Fractal fluids”, etc. would be in a theme, more or less structural, but always with the reference to the work. This implies that there is not a surmounting recital of the work, but rather that the work becomes, in that structure-work dialectic, in the clarifying factor of these reductions that want to be established.  In any case, if we wanted to outline the two more conventional reductions that today are accepted by a great part of the architectural culture, we would constitute a polarization. On one hand, we would establish an Architecture that comes from afar, from the 60′s and that reaches into the decade of the 90′s. We give an example that would be the Center of Contemporary Art of Alvaro Siza in Galicia, from the year 92, with an extraordinary point of maturity where Josep María Montaner has defined Architecture as ” art of the place.” All the settled procedures are here, starting from the context “modification” to Bernardo Secchi’s more extensive analysis.

The second trend that would reduce this panorama would be the one we call dissipation of the place, that can be understood as the origin of the third environment, the tele-environment of which we have spoken already, being a reinforcement of that fracture already reported, regarding the definition of attitudes that converge in the present.

We could further find a fourth layer, of infrastructures. There would be a kind of a last support of the whole current panorama of Architecture that would be formed by the decantation of a group of analysis and works that, since the mid 80′s, has continued to progress until the present.  The year 84 was characterized fundamentally by two analysis fully studied, one historical and the other philosophical,  led by Tafuri and Cacciari, that agree in understanding that our time is the time of the achieved nihilism, concluded, – using Heidegger’s term – as a threshold that opens the way for “another” architecture,  that would be the step to another setting.

That structure would behave as an anisotropic support tension loaded. And this takes place because two fields of coexistent forces are defined, that sometimes confront, sometimes talk, that sometimes agree, but that would constitute a kind of performance of movements. This infrastructure we have called a support, this performance of movements, would be occupied by those vectors corresponding to the name-mark, creators or groups of works that are influenced by a way of speech – that is not very clear in the confrontation -, underlying all the talk that is made.

The first front of that field of movements would be of the statement of the disciplinary area. There is a work that continues affirming the disciplinary area, revising, by means of the criticism, the frequence and the foundation of what the disciplinary field of  Architecture consists, but affirming a specific field for the disciplinary area.  In second place, and confronting the previous one, another front that decides on the absolute break up of discipline whose first stake has been the break up of its basic categories. It is what Patricio Peñalver described in his conference “Contaminations”, for the Seminar that took place in Seville (4), as one of the episodes of this long debate about the dissipation of discipline.

Represented here would be the clear acceptance of parallelism we have carried out from the beginning of the session between Culture and Architecture. It would be – using the dialectic that would define Modern Culture -, on the one hand, the self-afirmation procedures, understanding that self-afirmation exists, and that it would be where the maximum freedom of Architecture is; on the other hand, the understanding of determination, knowing that the position of most freedom of architecture is also in it. Therefore, each vector of the trajectories that we have defined as name-mark, will be affected by these force fields, distorting the routes and significant deviations taking place.

We could exemplify it by means of the clear deviation established in the work of Moneo, in the Kursaal of San Sebastian, coming from a debate developed since the 80’s to the 90’s with Peter Eisenman, a debate of confrontation of positions, not even theoretical, where finally – according to Moneo-, one enters in a possibility of dilation of the disciplinary area starting from the Deconstruction that Peter Eisenman outlines .  That Deconstruction is incorporated in the disciplinary area and a work takes place where the principle of afirmation is synthesized and the principle of contradiction of the discipline itself. That is to say, Kursaal would be a deviation, meaning to Moneo that the long debate process between the dissipation principles and affirmation of discipline are overcome in a synthesis where discipline emerges victorious, showing to what extent it is able to assume its affirmation and its negation at the same time. Besides, it is an extremely contradictory work. It is contradictory in its external-internal connection, or in its relation between sculptural appearance and architectural space condition, etc. The interpretation of the work gives evidence of all those planes of contradictions synthesized by the architect’s desire and for the resolution of the work itself.

Summarizing the above-mentioned, this screen picks up changing, dynamic, irreversible and complex phenomena that are visualized by a successive interaction of layers that would have some basic units in the works.  Only in the works would be the conditions of sufficiency and necessity with regard to Architecture.  That means that the screen, more than giving a sole panorama, offers the possibility of a multiplicity of diagnosis that itself demands, gives a subjective indication of those diagnosis themselves and an interaction between the diagnosis that becomes apparent and the position it occupies.

Evidently, that screen requires some instructions of use or an explanation of how we have proceeded, so that the device is really productive, in the socialization of knowledge that is being established. To break up with the diagnosis and with the occupied position means to open the diagnosis to participation, to the multiplicity of diagnosis and to the subjective process of themselves. And that is not obtained but giving some instructions of use, because if the screen is used like said, the speech closes down on itself.

We have proceeded, therefore, from one particular situation to the general situation, we have centered ourselves in the interpretation of the works until reaching a deep understanding of them first, that in the extension of the interpretation, it allows us to speak of characteristic features that we will admit to have their origin in a clear differentiation of one work with regard to another. And then, the two ideas are possible.  And a second idea, from the general situation to the particular one, establishing vertical sections that cut the screen in depth, relating the different layers. One cannot stop at the description of the flat surface on the screen, but rather it is necessary to establish those vertical sections that cross in different points and in different directions to register diverse strata and to establish exchanges among them. This would be the double procedure that we have used when elaborating the range of topics of the Theory of Architecture.

We can close the discussion with some provisional conditions that would be:

1. The observer of the panorama of Architecture, or rather of the metapanorama of Architecture today, should pass from a procedure of distraction, – due to the proliferation of the field of the architectural move, of its impact, of its obsolescence and of its recycling -, to be involved in and, in a third step, it would “look for friends.” If this is this way, it breaks the whole panorama of teaching-learning dialectic of the practice of Architecture. In this I agree with Bruno Zevi, the structure of the current teaching of Architecture finishes, because a way of making and understanding Architecture has concluded.

2. Facing the ambivalent attitude that we have described, regarding the situation of Architecture that is taking place, the coda of provisional conclusions would be to assume the double requirement. On one hand it is necessary to rewrite a genealogy, as a present procedure that allows the appearance of work as the constitution of sense. A genealogy that would go against History, – and which is already present in arguments of historiography, in those where their limits are revised and manifested -, but also, contradictorily, in the sense of the cultural characterization of our present.

At the same time the other requirement that would be to formulate again the disciplinary sector. What are we to do?, How is Moneo doing it, in the understanding of a genealogical reading of tradition or capturing fragments and using them for the production of works? No. It is necessary to raise up, to overcome that complex scenario in which today Architecture is framed. Then, to formulate again the disciplinary section would be to locate the Architecture faced, surrounded. or required by four sides: the field of Image itself, that of Ecology as the one that clearly defines the ways of inhabiting the Earth, a third field would be Patrimony, as social significance of that task of Architecture that we already named, which would be the one of taking charge of what is already built, and finally, a shared position of Architecture with many other current techniques, among which it integrates itself, and from which it would have to learn, what would be the problem of the Generation of Shape.

To formulate again the disciplinary section would be to open up Architecture to answers or to integration possibilities or to successive relationship with these four fields. Understanding that Architecture never again would assume the role of ordering, of generating or of mediator of this reality, but rather they would be partial mediations that would respond at the same time to cultural or social problems.  Simultaneously they would define the working fields for Architecture. There would be a double definition then: How it worries about, how it understands and how it gives answer to a specific question, how it secures a characteristic field of work. It is what current people using methodology propose as the way of investigation that gathers together disciplines around a specific problem, and the disciplines contribute in a first stage, according to that they can respond to the problem; and immediately, in a second movement, to dissolve completely the disciplinar autonomy, and to begin to establish a crossed relationship of disciplines that overcome from far that first position. The maximum case would be Genetics. Genetics determines again Medicine, Biology, Mathematics themselves, and it determines them in a specific set of problems. Computer science would be another; evidently, it determines all the disciplines in its formulation.

If we draw a cross, and in each part of the division of the space of that cross we locate Patrimony up on the left, Ecology up on the right, Image below on the left, and the Generation of Shape below on the right, although many other distributions could be made and we could understand it as a test to reach conclusions, we would have an axis of self-organization opposed to the disciplinary resistance. Below there would be an axis, this same axis, of adaptation-dissolution, always talking about Architecture. There would be a transit of space in the upper part, to the cyber-space, referred to the half in the lower part.

We find the conservative attitudes in the superior half, understanding that this epithet doesn’t have a pejorative nuance. In the other half we would find the innovators.  We would locate the speech of Sloterdijk up above and in the innovators the speech of Bauman. This picture read like an explicit autonomy of fields in which Architecture has to get involved, an underground interaction. Here we could speak of many things, for example, to what extent, in this that appears as absolutely autonomous fields, begin to cross behind non-apparent interactions, that multiply themselves every time more and more. Finally, it would be necessary to make a reference, still without defining, to an absent organic character. All this can be deduced from this diagram.

The question regarding this field would be: Can a function exist for Architecture in this new joint? A specific function for the architectural culture in that joint, in these fields that would be useful to self-define what Architecture is?  It is necessary to understand that Architecture, as part of Culture, has lost its function or it has clearly jeopardized its old function.

We have passed from a cultural plurality to a plurality of cultures. And since we have overcome the juncture in which Culture took place starting from the basic operation of the ordination of space, since a cyber-space that commits the category of Space itself from which we started has appeared, the almost paradigmatic figure and of extreme necessity – and here the diagnosis made by Rafael would be completed, with the one here proposed- that emerge from that plurality of cultures, it is the translator’s figure. Who is able to translate in that plurality of cultures, from one to the other, meanings, to transfer, in short, to dialogue, what is actually the necessary figure. A necessary figure that Bauman defines clearly.

Rafael:  It could also be called to mediate.

José Ramón:  Of course, I am using Bauman’s categories. The task would be to understand, not to censor.  It is important, because they are the contrapositions to what has been Modern Culture before the cyber-space.  Here would be located the whole criticism to anthropocentrism. Interpret, not to legislate. Abandon the monologue in benefit of the dialogue. One realizes that if this diagnosis is applied  to the architectural culture itself, there is a figure and a work that already produces this we are talking about, that is the work and the character of Rem Koolhaas who declares in an explicit way that Architecture has to understand and not to censor, interpret and not to legislate, and that it has to abandon the monologue in benefit of the dialogue.

Then, the role of Architecture would be of mediation. Understanding that it is in the culture of the media and that the previous culture is the space culture, the one that comes from the upper part of the scheme, can do from here a more productive relationship between a culture of the media and a space culture, starting from these four fields. What happens here is that space is committed in regard to the cyber-space, self-organization in regard to resistance, adaptation in regard to dissolution.

Because the mediating operation that the media do, is carried out from being shamelessly established in the Image. The only thing they do is to integrate the four fields to this one alone. There could be an operation that, playing between resistance and self-organization, establishes mediations that produces an enlargement of that field of Image, dissolving at the same time its own structure in a full organic condition. What should come now is to introduce by means of those mediation procedures the rest of the fields, so that Image loses protagonism, acquiring at the same time complexity. And the other fields lose autonomy and acquire integration.  That is the operation that Architecture could do.

Rafael: Although we use the word mediation, it has nothing to do here mediation with how it was understood by the middle of XXth century.

José Ramón: Mainly because the power Architecture had of such mediation has been condemned. It is necessary to start knowing that Image has absolute protagonism. But Image cannot adopt certain levels of cultural translation in Heritage , in Ecological and in the Generation of Shape environment.  In the moment that procedure starts – and it has already started -, is when Image incorporates, from certain positions of the media, the mediation speech, for example, in the multi-disciplinary position that Image itself makes of the Inheritance, the world of the media transforms itself.

Rafael: Another input that we could remember is the following one: it would not be only – as we play saying-, when speaking of the topic of the Generation of Shape, for example, of the relationship of the architectural disciplines, of the autonomous knowledge of Architecture with other knowledge, but the relationship between architectural discipline and what would be its negation, the de-construction of discipline with disciplinary fields and elements that de-construct these disciplinary fields.

José Ramón: It is so, and what is more, it would imply more things: Right now there is a discussion of the Generation of Shape, the basic confrontation between artificial-natural. In Félix Duke’s book they are doing so. If you go back to “Art and space” of Heidegger and you start from that consideration of “tejné” with the two Greek verbs used, and you revise them, you find that what actually are dissolved with the Generation of Shape are the categories of artificial-natural. From the philosophical speech it is clear, but we must not loose sight of the genetic speech, because what genetic investigation is doing is to control in an artificial way the bases of nature. But actually what it is doing is producing models of formal generation that are not only applicable to genetics, but, metaphorically, to multiple fields and levels of formal generation of other techniques that are parallel to it.

Therefore, we should not look for it in the pattern of Handicraft, of Art, of the appearance of nature, of the economic processes or besides them.  In all those fields, even if they are totally distant from the architectural culture or next to it, procedures of formal generation are taking place, in which Architecture has to locate itself collaterally. Then the field of the Generation of Shape has lost completely, or at best, it has integrated what has been the Generation of Shape of Modernity as a particular matter. And it has passed to a superior level, where the Generation of Shape of Architecture is a particular case inside another Generation of Shape that is taking place in the whole productive extension of society.

When formulating a certain problem of formal generation in Architecture, maximum fluency and availability were proposed at a certain moment.  But if we do it, not in the architectural field, but in the genetic field, we would find that in the genetic field it is formulated, although not completely solved. Wouldn’t it be possible metaphorically, or with an homotetic movement, from one form to another form, to produce a solution here to this problem? Therefore, the fields are there, but Architecture is depending on those fields.  Not advancing, but depending on them.  It is determined by those fields, or it should be if it wants to respond to problems it may have itself. This way, we would be talking about a field very close to the disciplinary autonomy, but that immediately enters in that underground interaction. Here an organic character is taking form, but it can’t be seen until the interactions are not outlined.

Rafael: But it would be an unstable organic character absolutely.

José Ramón: Of course, it could not be otherwise, not only unstable, but ecstatic, not only in the interaction but in the nature of each one of these elements.

Rafael: Change in lowering. The non-discipline or the limits of discipline appear as a necessary complement, without which today it is not possible to speak of in a disciplinary way or vice versa. In fact, disciplines are here to start the true sense that appeared in nihilism, in the de-construction. Reality, or it is nearer to the de-constructed  reality, or it is nearer to the constructed reality, provided there is a capacity to assume it the way we do it, to name it somehow. That is to say, we use De-construction but we are not de-constructors.  Does that mean that we are in the disciplinary field or outside? No, we are in a field that includes discipline and things that are not discipline, but that have to have relation with ways of knowledge non-reducible to scientific discipline, but that neither are De-construction, as Hermeneutic, or as the whole line of Spiritual Sciences. Here would be included that whole tradition in ways of acquisition of truth, in any of those environments that are part of the spiritual team an architect manages, and to which it would be necessary to give it its place.

José Ramón: That attitude implies to start from a configuration in which Architecture still has a place, however now Architecture doesn’t have a place, and the architect doesn’t have any place and he is no longer architect. What is being proposed is to assume fully the dissolution. If one has a mediator condition, it is mediation. There is no condition, there is mediation. What equipment implies mediation? An equipment which means recycling the whole architectural tradition, not according to itself, but to the prejudice of the equipment of the mediation that is being claimed in that attitude that you outline. That is to say, located between two fields we outlined before (afirmation/dissolution) it is to do a double game, like Jano, you are looking at both sides, and you are the construction of that limit which at the same time must be the circle of dialogue. This condition is the one that Architecture won’t accept.

Of course, you destroy all the spiritual equipment that one has, and you assume the condition of the media as a whole condition. Who makes Space?, who integrates space and cyber-space?  Because the media doesn’t do it, and neither the space techniques, here is where architecture could enter. In fact, for example, the whole formulation of Zaha Hadid according to the cyber-space condition is haunting this. Or all the works of dissolution of the categories of space condition, in the techniques of the media, would be very close to Rem Koolhaas.

The problem is that right now the only way, the only place where Architecture is establishing this mediation is in the architectural work. And while this circumstance remains, Architecture won’t be able to make the full mediation, because the work is a self-representation principle, and mediation doesn’t take place, understanding that this negation of itself will arrive to an affirmation of itself later on. What this affirmation leads to, we don’t know, but we suspect in some topics, like in the relation with Patrimony.

On the other hand some losses will take place, the form capacity that Architecture has had, – more than the space capacity, the first capacity of Architecture has been the one of form -, and the management capacity.  Understanding management not as an administrative operation but the setting in an integrated space character, between space and cyberspace, that Architecture can outline. Because it cannot really be said that we are in the cyberspace, we are in the cyberspace, but with an absolute permanence in the space character;  what happens is that the cyberspace assumes the symbolic meanings with which we move in the space.  Well, let’s mediate then, but let us do it  taking it to the limit. Then, in Patrimony you can understand it very well.  Where is the form, where is the project? There is no project, there is no form. There is prediction capacity and, therefore, play. And now, Le Corbusier: “The wonderful play.. ” of forms that are not yours but rather you no longer propose them, you don’t build them but rather you use them again, appropriated from another place, in a space, nor space neither cyber-spatial, but rather in the intermediation where man lives, between the virtual and non virtual area.

Form will take place in the complex procedures of the Generation of the form. When the architectural form is able to assume the complexity that it has assumed in Genetics, eventually it will be ready to assume that question. But today we are with the works, and the challenge is not in the works, thousands of Guggenheim can be produced, but we don’t solve the problem, because Guggenheim is a specific case in an integration.

Rafael: That is what actually was derived from Mariano’s thesis (5): the topic is solved in the works, but not socially.

José Ramón: Of course, this is a challenge.

Rafael: And, what is more, it is no longer correct to think that socially it could have something to do with the word discipline, as conventionally we understand it, or as architectural autonomy.

José Ramón: Neither work, nor architect nor discipline. And what is more we are living it day to day.

Rafael: And also, to the end from the interior of architecture.

José Ramón: Yes, there is no longer interiority, Architecture is condemned. Now one can understand that Medicine made it and Architecture did not.

Rafael: We could enter then in what would be between expropriation and appropriation, between works as paradigms of a wider generality and dissolution of discipline.

José Ramón: The play is beautiful, but it is beautiful with an important work behind it, that would build the framework formed by a series of paradigmatic works that, without being defined, would constitute the constellation of points, of which we spoke in the previous session.  The role of discipline would consist in understanding each one of these points, and establishing possible connections. But be careful, we might arrive to an order of the chaotic at most, that is to say, we might arrive to a fractal.  An order of singularity applied to totally opposed singularities. But it is tough work, and it has to be done. This work is drawing a fractal form, and transferring it to the other side, I start to interact, to build frames, to relate them, that is to say, to establish units by surmounting levels of complexity, to end up building a new frame. When this advances, an encounter will open the way to a possible integration.

Rafael: But, then, we would achieve something to happen in Architecture that in no way is happening in the social area, that is to say, if something distinguishes us regarding the present – as deduced from the current works -, is that at any given time this produces a hope, even a possible trust;  if we do certain operations, we will take a step that will be socially obvious; On the other hand, society is requiring it, it needs it vehemently.  Isn’t that the hope we lack today?

José Ramón: But in the line we act today this will never take place. It would only take place this way, and for it politics are condemned: if society lives its dream with some minimum unions that divide it in social groups, we have here politics’ horizon. On top of that, reaching agreement between the differences of the social groups, it formulates a project that divides society at least in two parts: left and right. It is non-viable because what is happening is that each group of these parts is formulated according to a principle, positive, but at the same time also formulated according to a negative principle.

Why sometimes is it positive and sometimes negative? Because the categories with which we are dividing the social groups are continuously being interchanged. This way, listening to any speech, due to the superior field that we described before, I formulated the possibility of the partiality and so on, and it is in the lower field where it has to be, in this specific case, in the positive and negative formulation.

Today’s political categories, are no longer exclusively political, but ecological, patrimonial, image and generation of shape. But, how to find a common territory? As we are speaking of politics, it should be in a common territory. We won’t find a common territory, but rather plots of integration and approach that can formulate a horizon of encounters at a certain point. They will play in absolutely partial formulations, but they will be partialities that work as if they were totalities. In a model of partiality, a model of totality can be generated. It is taking place continuously, until partiality, assumed as a model of totality and sold as an image by the media, becomes a referent for society.

Rafael: Conviction, the subconscious attitude that current people have regarding the possibility of that partial integration carried out in the social area is practically non-existent regarding the 60’s.

José Ramón: In fact what I outline are not battles to be totally won, but successive skirmishes. What we can’t continue to do is to avoid reality. It is necessary to enter into the skirmishes, in all of them, to work on them, to see what we are building.  Because we already know that through other ways there is nothing to do.  Neither institutional organizations, nor society… are producing anything. We begin to be in a world of multiple possibilities, of insertions, of mediations that respond to a partiality, to a skirmish. Here totality can be generated, or not; but at least we have done something. I’m talking from Architecture’s point of view.  Isn’t it a good investment to try this? I’m not talking about consecrated architects but about the group of people that is, in a certain moment, devoted to produce levels of coherence and of social gain, up to where contradiction allows them. Otherwise, what takes place is many people waiting for magic to touch them with a wand converting them in “something.” Something absolutely unproductive.

Rafael: I am totally convinced that one of the critical elements of our civilization is to consecrate the principle of non possibility. We have arrived to a point of no-return, where any social project of minimum span, has neither sense, nor reality. Then, “the future community” is a dream, because it is not the future community, but the same community being refracted or reflected on itself. And each time with less authority.  What scares me to death is that, when that possibility of hope opens up, it is because it is in our subconscious; that is to say, due to our temperament, we don’t know how to live this way, the same as we neither know how to be only de-constructors. We need the minimum glimmer of a starter, in which the primary basic underlying processes, at least start. Let’s see if actually it is possible to do something, but of course, in a completely different way.

José Ramón: It is necessary to understand how it takes place: let us assume what we have, and let us develop it. In this theoretical development, almost everything appears to continue the same way. But it can also point to a possibility.

Rafael: What has been developing from the 60’s, from those years that one is fully conscious – for example in Sartre -, is the certainty that with some extreme construction levels we don’t have any possibility to intervene.  Still in the 60’s it was thought that one could. Now it is not possible. Each one would go its own way, but who finds it?. Surely Science would be the one to find it. You pointed out: through Genetics, of course.  Science finds it, Mathematics finds it, Music maybe, Painting would be there, that is not Architecture.

José Ramón: By force of being dissolved.

Rafael: By force of being something else, yes.

José Ramón: We say: give up your work, give up therefore to ownership, give up to the principle of shape, introduce the mediation principle. Is it possible to see what a politician or an anthropologist don’t see? that role is the necessary one to transform, to carry out this mediation process.

Rafael: Without giving up, however, to the genious. Let us not give up producing it in a paradigmatic way in a work.

José Ramón: It is not that we give up, but rather that it belongs to reality. And it bears a backing that prolongs reality a little further. But I would not keep with that end, but rather that this is a sketch. That maybe we won’t see it, but there it is at least, because it is fundamental to do it. And what happens is that we are in a continuous dialectic that points to compensate and to counterbalance, because, at certain levels, – culturally or architecturally – it is necessary to work using counterbalances, for example: in the 60’s they had to bring Social Sciences to the School of Architecture, because it was necessary to compensate an excess; now it is also necessary to compensate with diagnosis. Otherwise said, when looking at the panorama, we observe that it is necessary to omit this vision, which is not.

Look what happens when somebody tells to the established architects, as knowledge, that what they say is not right, that it is otherwise. There is physical aggression. Because mainly there is another thing to which they won’t give up, this is the beginning of hope.

Rafael: The beginning of a beginning of hope.

José Ramón: The death announced.

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. About the ” ANY” congresses, the magazine Lotus Internacional, 1998, contains an interesting work.

4. Seminar about deconstruction, held in ETSA Seville 1993.

5.The thesis referred  belongs to Professor Mariano Pérez Humanes, titled: “Implications.  About the situation of architecture in the world of the image”. Seville 2001.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Hacia dónde va el pasado – Cruz, Manuel – Paidos – Barcelona – 2002

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

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

Filosofía para el fin de los tiempos. Tecnología y Apocalipsis – Duque, Félix – Akal  – Madrid – 2000