supercritical #2

AA Words series 1-4.

I don't want readers thinking I'm being overly supercritical – even though the meeting between Rem and Peter (see below) was a poor excuse for a conversation, this is neither indicative of Supercritical as a volume or the AA Words as a series. Millennium People reviewed Anti-Object (the second book in the series) September last year, and thoroughly enjoyed it (featuring two guest reviews by M. Rosin-Melser – late of ETH, recently returned to Sydney). In a sense, the failure of Koolhaas and Eisenman to establish a dialogue is practically inevitable given the intensely complicated history of these two figures. This is all by-the-bye, and I am no apologist.

The series aims to "deflect" the force of an architectural culture dominated by the endless production and consumption of images by means of "direct language, concise editing and beautiful, legible graphic design". As a concept it works – as much for its visual appearance as its content. I suspect (and in several cases this suspicion has been confirmed) that quite a lot of the students I've seen buying the Words series do so initially for the Underground typo and bold primary colours, only to find that the text is pretty alright too.

That said, in response to Brett Steele's claim that it's "really a magazine in disguise", its really only issue one, Supercritical, that feels like a miniature magazine, and I think this is due to the diversity of its content, even if it does largely revolve around Rem and Peter. Apart from the disastrous dispute there is a great discussion between Robert Somol and Jeffrey Kipnis, moderated by Mark Cousins, (the highlight of which is when the two critics impersonate Koolhaas and Eisenman and have the "conversation they might have had if they had been honest with each other"), a really interesting discussion between Alvin Boyarksy and Peter from 1975 (broadcast on AA radio, which, though fascinating, shows that Peter was just as difficult back then as today), a 1976 interview between Koolhaas and Peter Cook, and a 100 point document by Brett Steele analysing the nature of Peter and Rem's work, rise and success, writing, as individual entities and in comparison to each other.

The result of these varied chapters is to present a snapshot of the two architects not just at one moment (one discussion, one night) but over time. The nature of the starchitect is to have their popularity reinforced by the present – this method of displaying a timeline of vignettes goes a long way to removing something of the aura of the two men and presenting them in a more critical light. What becomes very evident from the 'miniature magazine' is that Koolhaas and Eisenman are only human after all...

I highly recommend the series.

anti-object #2

Brett Steele – AA head honcho – writes in the introduction to Kuma’s text that he is against “self-centred architecture… deliberately distinct from its surroundings”.
He continues:

“‘My ultimate aim’, [Kuma] writes early on in his book, ‘is to “erase” architecture’. Such an ambition couldn’t be further removed from the majority of a younger generation of digital experiementalists today, pursuing a renewal of formalism not seen within architecture for decades.”

As founder of the AADRL, and therefore one of the driving forces behind the pursuit of neo-formalism, and the advance of digital experimentalism, this comment is not without a certain hypocrisy. The younger generation are largely that way because Steele made them so. I am not making a value judgement about the worth of digital experimentalism (which has obviously been a tremendously important force in the recent history of global architecture), I am simply noting my surprise that Steele would distance himself from a movement he helped create.

+++++

In the first part, Max mostly focussed on the division of subject and object as proposed by Kuma’s text: the possibility of relating the subject to the landscape through the power of the floor plane, and the ability to blur formal boundaries of architecture by the ‘particlisation’ of materials and elements.

Both of these main points relate to Kuma’s definition of an object as being something wilfully separate from the ground plane – a finite figure cut off from the earth (as opposed to the earth itself, which is continuous in all directions and thus infinite). However, this definition also excludes burying a building. The new millennium fad of concealing buildings in the landscape by submerging them, or employing other mechanical modes for hiding their structure, does not actually change the nature of the building's limits (a wall is not less definitive because it is underground).

Max discussed what it isn’t, but what is an architectural object?

“Kuma sees new digital and informational technologies as leading us to an aesthetics of disappearance, rather than image or form” Steele notes. Images and forms are the current architectural stock-in-trade, and Kuma makes the historical reason for this quite clear: communication. At a period in Modernism when only black and white images were being published in grainy magazines, the architects that succeeded in drawing attention (and subsequently more projects) were those who could capture the essential forms of their buildings and diffuse them through B+W photographs (Barcelona Pavilion, Villa Savoye, etc). The legacy of this period is the ubiquity of the ‘metalevel’ image: an imagined point of view that portrays the whole building. This manner of viewing architecture necessarily renders it an object for consideration.

Bruno Taut, according to Kuma, lost out to rival Modernists because he “failed to understand the twentieth-century paradox, that individuals as isolated subjects shunned groups in any form. They were sustained in their mediocrity through the possession of attractive products.” Modern architecture became an 'attractive product' by appealing first to the spirit of domestic rivalry – the Modernist home was an object that could be packaged, sold, and used as a means to escape the mediocrity that was the inevitable result of the era of machine reproduction.

I mention the escape from mediocrity because Kuma lets us know that the architectural object is not, whatever Corbusier might argue, for the people. It is the production of one-of-a-kind jewels, founded on capital. It is the Burj Dubai, the Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Phaeno Science Museum, the Gherkin, and a million other projects – today with no exclusion of function or program.

From the text, I can only conclude this: the architectural object is full of form, but empty of meaning; found in one location, but conceived independently of place; sexy without being in the least bit seductive.

start at the end

I was interviewed for the AA the other day, and at the end of the meeting a member of the panel asked me if I had any questions. ‘I read Kuma’s Anti-Object recently’ I said, ‘and I found the introduction by Brett Steele very interesting. Given his, and the AA’s, role at the forefront of the digital revolution in architecture, his support for an architecture that is, if anything, adigital, seems quite a striking change of position. Is this symptomatic of the change in contemporary thinking? What do you think is the future of the digital revolution, and more specifically, what will be the future role of the AA in this field?’ None of the three replied, then after a few seconds a man who I sensed was least impressed by my presentation said: ‘the revolution is over.’

This reminded me of something I read in Log magazine recently, (run by Cynthia Davidson, Eisenman’s wife). Mario Carpo writes: “In the early 90’s, the digital revolution in architecture had no clearly identified course of history to call into question: in true post-modernist fashion it had no preset destination - no target, as it were, and almost no end in mind. Indeed, 15 years later, some may reasonably claim that as the digital turn had nowhere to go, it went nowhere.”

Yeah, alright, fair enough, I dislike the vocabulary of digital architecture as much as the next person. The projects mostly resemble neo-baroque fretwork, objects of unnecessary complexity just plonked down wherever their site might be (with no thought to landscape, to human scale, to the modality of perception), and then these architects claim to not have produced architecture at all, but programmable elements that in themselves are generic, but which can be adapted to the hyper-specific conditions of program. It makes me ill.
However, I hardly think its fair to search out a scapegoat in these times of global financial crisis. I first noticed this bitter approach when Zaha was balled out by one and all at the Barbican in April. Her style of digital architecture epitomises the fundamental ethos of Modernism: that we produce architecture we are technologically capable of, and not morally responsible for.

Does this perhaps mean that the Modern era is done with? Probably not. But the aim of this blog is, at the end of the digital revolution, to propose new directions for the profession. This does not mean abandonning digital techniques, but it does mean carefully examining the ontological legitimacy of what we produce. Or, if you prefer, asking again ‘why do we make architecture?’.