En una necesaria reivindicación reciente de talento geográfico, Inaki Ábalos ha defendido el rascacielos como prototipo organizativo necesario hacia una idea de ciudad que tenga en cuenta los nuevos avances tecnológicos en el reparto del suelo: "Verticalismo" es el arma tecnológica, ideológica y estética propuesta para que "la exitosa experiencia del rascacielos moderno centrada esencialmente en el negocio privado" se vea reformulada en sus términos "repensándola para el beneficio público o para el acuerdo de ambos" de modo que se investiguen"nuevas modalidades de gestión urbana que prefiguren el futuro." Parece sensato aunque tardío, que los elementos técnicos urbanos se adequen de una vez por todas a las nuevas tecnologías y que con ello, nuevos y más creativos elementos de gestión del suelo público se desarrollen. Hasta aquí estamos de acuerdo.
Ahora bien, dicho esto, no creo que la solución sea una exaltación de la tipología vertical como tal ya que ésta peca precisamente de timidez y sospecha. Ante la 'densificación' a la que están abocadas 'las ciudades contemporánes' el reto está precisamente en hacer accesible los diferentes niveles y estratos en que se articulará la ciudad como espacio públco: no se trata de que el espacio público acceda a las cotas superiores sino que la ciudad las "invada". No debería el espació público situarse a las puertas del rascacielos mendigando su acomodo en una tipología que siempre le fue esquiva sino al contrario, amplificar y reivindicar su importancia y su gestión como modo alternativo a la ciudad moderna. Ciertamente, si el rascacielos ha jugado históricamente en favor del capital, porqué no suponer que lo seguirá haciendo?. En cambio, la mayoración del espacio colectivo y su colonización de los espacios que ahora mismo no están ocupados se me antoja mucho más interesante y productiva. De hecho, resulta paradójico que los organismos públicos tengan pleno control sobre las cotas peatonales así como del espacio aéreo, sin tener en cuenta que quizá exista un lugar entre medio que también requiera su participación. No se trata de volver a rescatar las propuestas de Yonna Friedman o, con anterioridad de Eugene Henard, (de los Smithsons si se prefiere) pero ciertamente tenerlas como referencia para potenciar el actualmente atrofiado espacio público. De lo contrario continuaremos contribuyendo al paradigma de la acumulación del capital que es el suelo y Frederick Jameson (y el presente inmendiato) deberían ponernos en sobreaviso de los peligros que conlleva la estética "del ladrillo y del globo".
El artículo se puede leer en el siguiente enlace:
http://www.elpais.com/articulo/arte/Verticalismo/elpepuculbab/20090117elpbabart_1/Tes
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
On Teratology
Mythological representations, psychological entities, allegorical instances, lexical fictions, animated devices, poetic references, or simply architectural monsters: the epithets most commonly ascribed to the works by John Hejduk ooze an overt discomfort in the side of criticism to analyze the extremely personal and sometimes inscrutable last architectural proposals of the American architect. Uncommon adjectives in the field of architectural criticism such as aberrant, dangerous, pointed, errant, or anomalous appear frequently in the scanty literature focused on that period.[1] Hejduk’s mid-career’s objects and experiments though [Fig 1], shouldn’t be considered as monsters but rather as demonstrations of an inconspicuous formal development that never took place.
The present paper will address that intermediate phase of John Hejduk’s work, specifically the Diamond Series, the x/y House[2]s, and the Wall House 3, -the first one belonging to the “Frame 3” and the last two to the “Frame 4” in the compilation of his complete works. These designs were developed during the time span from 1963 (the year of his return to New York and his initial steps as professor at the Cooper Union) and 1974, a period that becomes significant and revelatory for a better understanding of his later work within historical developments. I would like to propose that despite twists, displacements, dislocations, and other techniques fashioned by certain postmodern architecture, Hejduk 's figurative devices did not only departure from those representations but opposed them. Hejduk divides, duplicates, enlarges, places, deforms, adds, and imagines architectural elements, confronting us with a full array of formal expressions that have their dialectical reference in previous modernist accounts. I will try to show that a close formal analysis of the architectural objects in relation to modern formal achievements and his theoretical references and companions, far from suggesting an epistemological brake, can be placed within the very kernel of that discourse in a very specific morphological and historical manner. I have to face the problem though with an initial disclaimer: it is not my aim to be polemical or critical about the notion of modernism. I will refer by modern ‘form’ and modernism to the ‘International Style’, ‘the heroic period’, the official architecture discussed in the C.I.A.M’s. In sum: the architectural forms arising from the 1920s based in explicit geometrical undecorated volumes and compositions. I will assume for theoretical purposes that there is a common historiographical agreement (even though tendentiously constructed) about the recognition of those forms constituting the aesthetic reference for the subsequent modern architecture. Is this recognition the one that allows Collin Rowe and Manfredo Tafuri in their respective English and Italian critical comments to the 1972 exhibition ‘Five architects’[3] to denounce the repetition and plundering of past modern forms in East Coast American architecture. The condition of possibility of those objects assumes precisely the acceptation of a type of form as a common fixed and identifiable ground in relation to the modern aesthetic. Is this starting common point the one that allows me to face the objects I am about to analyze vis-à-vis canonical previous modern semantics.
This paper will constitute an instrument in itself, a productive model in order to reflect on aspects of form and its limits and deviations within the binary relation space-representation. The theoretical tripod supporting my argument is therefore originally constructed from the notions of formless, (or inform), form, and deformation. The concept formless was always present in all ancient cultures: the summerian ‘Abzu’ or the Greek ‘Chaos’ were liquids, magma, and matter without form, formless, pre-formed. This situation belongs to a moment when there is no explanation yet, only possibility. Once the world is ordered or in the fulfillment of that possibility, in other words, once the “Kosmos” is established, objects and myths take place in its apprehensible and comprehensible form. In-formation is both, a “formation of the mind of character” but also an act of communication. In this mythological model, to form implies necessarily a transmission of a recognizable apprehensible social meaning. To form and communicate or to define, come therefore hand in hand as in George Bataille’s subsequent description of the term formless:
A dictionary begins when it no longer gives the meaning of words, but their tasks. Thus formless is not only an adjective having a given meaning, but a term that serves to bring things down in the world, generally requiring that each thing have its form. What it designates has no rights in any sense and gets itself squashed everywhere, like a spider or an earth worn. In fact, for academic men to be happy, the universe would have to take shape. All of philosophy has no other goal: it is a matter of giving a frock coat to what is, a mathematical frock coat. On the other hand, affirming that the universe resembles nothing and is only formless amounts to saying that the universe is something like a spider or spit.[4]
The formless relates then to a non-communicable reality. The concept form instead, holds the position of the model, a collection of semantic “stylemas” identifiable for a large audience. Finally, the term deformation stands in ontological relationship to those accepted conditions of form, a deviation or disruption within the model that nonetheless keeps its identity. As a critical argument, I will also introduce a fourth aspect in the formal considerations that has in medical and biological studies an interesting precedent: teratology -also referred to as dysmorphology- is the medical science that studies “monstrosities or abnormal formations in animals or plants”. The subtle difference between deformations and malformations in aesthetic perception lies in its relationship to the existing model: a deformation takes place once the object as a reference is shaped and distinguishable whereas abnormal formations challenges ontologically that model representing a different path in formal identification constituting the base for the concept of “otherness”. While deformation departures from a past situation, the relationship of teratology to its model is completely synchronic. I will suggest then that those three formal categories, namely formless, form, and deformation belong to the deepest projective practice and formal strategy of John Hejduk, appearing intermittently either individually or in combination. The dialectical play between them entail what can be considered a ‘collapse of time’, an instant of formal otherness later to be present during the last phase of his work. I will also briefly examine “malformations” as an explanatory and encompassing consequence within Hejduk’s formal apparatus that situates the object in the very exterior limit of the concept of the “other”. Is in those moments where his past graphic exercises with fables during his student years at the Cooper Union will find accommodation among its formal research. As Peggy Deamer wrote, "this is formalism [Hejduk’s own] in the most profound sense of the term, in which is not merely an aspect of aesthetization, but of identity[5]"; an unwanted and perhaps belated identity for modernism.
[1] To explore Hejduk’s universe in his last works requires the necessary patience to deal with the poetical and narrative aspects linked to his designs, an aspect that I have avoided due to the limitations and scope of the paper. The formal analysis of that period though, is almost a requirement since precise dates, detailed programs, specific contexts, or client relations are inexistent from the major literature available. The conspicuous silent of Hejduk as an author becomes revelatory of his concerns and main understanding of the discipline. Nonetheless we must assume that in his projects there is a tiny and weak line connecting Hejduk’s figurative representation with architecture as a projective practice and therefore, susceptible to be built even in a distant future or a-temporal time: a defensive critical position that will be considered as Manfredo Tafuri signals “in order not to remain caught in the vicious circle of a language that speaks only of itself, in order not to participate guiltily in the “infinite entertainment” that it promises”.
[2] The series explore the partial appearance and combination between pure geometrical forms: ½, ¼, & ¾ of circles, squares and diamonds used for the final composition.
[3] Colin Rowe, “Introduction”, in Five Architects, Eisenman, Graves, Gwathmey, Hejduk, Meier, New York: Wittenborn & Company, 1972, pp.3-8 and Manfredo Tafuri, “Les bijoux indiscrets” in Five Architects N.Y., Rome: Officina Edizioni, 1981, pp. 7-30. Exhibition where Hejduk’s work was present.
[4] George Bataille, “Formless” in Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927-1939. Edited by Allan Stoekl. Translated by Allan Stoekl, Carl R. Lovitt and Donald M. Else, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985, p.31
[5] Peggy Deamer, “Me, Myself, and I” in Michael K. Hays, Hejduk’s Chronotope, Princeton: Princeton Architectural Press & The Canadian Center for Architecture, 1996 p.72. Although, Peggy refers to the psychological identification between Hejduk in his multiple versions (The Hero, the “I”, and so), the sentence seems appropiate in historical and geographical sense.
The present paper will address that intermediate phase of John Hejduk’s work, specifically the Diamond Series, the x/y House[2]s, and the Wall House 3, -the first one belonging to the “Frame 3” and the last two to the “Frame 4” in the compilation of his complete works. These designs were developed during the time span from 1963 (the year of his return to New York and his initial steps as professor at the Cooper Union) and 1974, a period that becomes significant and revelatory for a better understanding of his later work within historical developments. I would like to propose that despite twists, displacements, dislocations, and other techniques fashioned by certain postmodern architecture, Hejduk 's figurative devices did not only departure from those representations but opposed them. Hejduk divides, duplicates, enlarges, places, deforms, adds, and imagines architectural elements, confronting us with a full array of formal expressions that have their dialectical reference in previous modernist accounts. I will try to show that a close formal analysis of the architectural objects in relation to modern formal achievements and his theoretical references and companions, far from suggesting an epistemological brake, can be placed within the very kernel of that discourse in a very specific morphological and historical manner. I have to face the problem though with an initial disclaimer: it is not my aim to be polemical or critical about the notion of modernism. I will refer by modern ‘form’ and modernism to the ‘International Style’, ‘the heroic period’, the official architecture discussed in the C.I.A.M’s. In sum: the architectural forms arising from the 1920s based in explicit geometrical undecorated volumes and compositions. I will assume for theoretical purposes that there is a common historiographical agreement (even though tendentiously constructed) about the recognition of those forms constituting the aesthetic reference for the subsequent modern architecture. Is this recognition the one that allows Collin Rowe and Manfredo Tafuri in their respective English and Italian critical comments to the 1972 exhibition ‘Five architects’[3] to denounce the repetition and plundering of past modern forms in East Coast American architecture. The condition of possibility of those objects assumes precisely the acceptation of a type of form as a common fixed and identifiable ground in relation to the modern aesthetic. Is this starting common point the one that allows me to face the objects I am about to analyze vis-à-vis canonical previous modern semantics.
This paper will constitute an instrument in itself, a productive model in order to reflect on aspects of form and its limits and deviations within the binary relation space-representation. The theoretical tripod supporting my argument is therefore originally constructed from the notions of formless, (or inform), form, and deformation. The concept formless was always present in all ancient cultures: the summerian ‘Abzu’ or the Greek ‘Chaos’ were liquids, magma, and matter without form, formless, pre-formed. This situation belongs to a moment when there is no explanation yet, only possibility. Once the world is ordered or in the fulfillment of that possibility, in other words, once the “Kosmos” is established, objects and myths take place in its apprehensible and comprehensible form. In-formation is both, a “formation of the mind of character” but also an act of communication. In this mythological model, to form implies necessarily a transmission of a recognizable apprehensible social meaning. To form and communicate or to define, come therefore hand in hand as in George Bataille’s subsequent description of the term formless:
A dictionary begins when it no longer gives the meaning of words, but their tasks. Thus formless is not only an adjective having a given meaning, but a term that serves to bring things down in the world, generally requiring that each thing have its form. What it designates has no rights in any sense and gets itself squashed everywhere, like a spider or an earth worn. In fact, for academic men to be happy, the universe would have to take shape. All of philosophy has no other goal: it is a matter of giving a frock coat to what is, a mathematical frock coat. On the other hand, affirming that the universe resembles nothing and is only formless amounts to saying that the universe is something like a spider or spit.[4]
The formless relates then to a non-communicable reality. The concept form instead, holds the position of the model, a collection of semantic “stylemas” identifiable for a large audience. Finally, the term deformation stands in ontological relationship to those accepted conditions of form, a deviation or disruption within the model that nonetheless keeps its identity. As a critical argument, I will also introduce a fourth aspect in the formal considerations that has in medical and biological studies an interesting precedent: teratology -also referred to as dysmorphology- is the medical science that studies “monstrosities or abnormal formations in animals or plants”. The subtle difference between deformations and malformations in aesthetic perception lies in its relationship to the existing model: a deformation takes place once the object as a reference is shaped and distinguishable whereas abnormal formations challenges ontologically that model representing a different path in formal identification constituting the base for the concept of “otherness”. While deformation departures from a past situation, the relationship of teratology to its model is completely synchronic. I will suggest then that those three formal categories, namely formless, form, and deformation belong to the deepest projective practice and formal strategy of John Hejduk, appearing intermittently either individually or in combination. The dialectical play between them entail what can be considered a ‘collapse of time’, an instant of formal otherness later to be present during the last phase of his work. I will also briefly examine “malformations” as an explanatory and encompassing consequence within Hejduk’s formal apparatus that situates the object in the very exterior limit of the concept of the “other”. Is in those moments where his past graphic exercises with fables during his student years at the Cooper Union will find accommodation among its formal research. As Peggy Deamer wrote, "this is formalism [Hejduk’s own] in the most profound sense of the term, in which is not merely an aspect of aesthetization, but of identity[5]"; an unwanted and perhaps belated identity for modernism.
[1] To explore Hejduk’s universe in his last works requires the necessary patience to deal with the poetical and narrative aspects linked to his designs, an aspect that I have avoided due to the limitations and scope of the paper. The formal analysis of that period though, is almost a requirement since precise dates, detailed programs, specific contexts, or client relations are inexistent from the major literature available. The conspicuous silent of Hejduk as an author becomes revelatory of his concerns and main understanding of the discipline. Nonetheless we must assume that in his projects there is a tiny and weak line connecting Hejduk’s figurative representation with architecture as a projective practice and therefore, susceptible to be built even in a distant future or a-temporal time: a defensive critical position that will be considered as Manfredo Tafuri signals “in order not to remain caught in the vicious circle of a language that speaks only of itself, in order not to participate guiltily in the “infinite entertainment” that it promises”.
[2] The series explore the partial appearance and combination between pure geometrical forms: ½, ¼, & ¾ of circles, squares and diamonds used for the final composition.
[3] Colin Rowe, “Introduction”, in Five Architects, Eisenman, Graves, Gwathmey, Hejduk, Meier, New York: Wittenborn & Company, 1972, pp.3-8 and Manfredo Tafuri, “Les bijoux indiscrets” in Five Architects N.Y., Rome: Officina Edizioni, 1981, pp. 7-30. Exhibition where Hejduk’s work was present.
[4] George Bataille, “Formless” in Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927-1939. Edited by Allan Stoekl. Translated by Allan Stoekl, Carl R. Lovitt and Donald M. Else, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985, p.31
[5] Peggy Deamer, “Me, Myself, and I” in Michael K. Hays, Hejduk’s Chronotope, Princeton: Princeton Architectural Press & The Canadian Center for Architecture, 1996 p.72. Although, Peggy refers to the psychological identification between Hejduk in his multiple versions (The Hero, the “I”, and so), the sentence seems appropiate in historical and geographical sense.
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