back to basics

The retrospective epochal terminator, an MP orginal (more or less).

Millennium People. It is as it sounds: a blog for the People of the New Millennium.

But I thought I would just recap, for those latecomers at the back, and reiterate what MP is really all about: the uncertainty of the current architectural (and epochal) situation. Zaha's on the out, Dubai is quickly becoming a sandblasted stillborn, and I can faintly hear Ballard's Chelsea housewives murmuring into their martinis "someone really ought to do something".

Its a bad situation. Architects and theorists everywhere, lets take a moment to prop ourselves up on our unemployed elbows and take stock of the situation: the sub-prime crisis has come, and the boom has gone. Like so many Rip Van Winkels we naively now awake to the fact that China, the Gulf, and the endless stream of dubious commercial constructions we merrily knocked up, were morally moribund white elephants (or ivory towers).

Worse, the favourite pastime of so many students and young professionals – I am referring to digital formalism – has been murdered in its bed. No longer is there any hope that it will one day dominate the world of architectural construction, it has been relegated to nothing more than a stylistic dead end, like those typical of the beginning of last century (art nouveau, etc). On the upside, at least now when I speak out against meaningless form-finding I don't sound like a Luddite.

How are we rallying ourselves? MP is seeing two general trends in architectural thought emerge: the retrospective and the reactionary (I am simplifying by presenting the extremes, but I think the spectrum generally holds true).

The former have decided to seamlessly splice 1968 (and the years directly after it) to the present day. Through the re-examining of groups like archigram and the infamous lessons from Las Vegas they aim to by-pass all of that post-modernist, post-post-modernist, bullshit and reconnect with their roots. Soggy with nostalgia, they lovingly recount tales of simpler times – utopias were only a few years away and for a young architect anything seemed possible. Glorified is the architect-citizen, who told the Man where he could stick it (there is of course no mention of the architect's subsequent punishment, doomed to a half century of quibbling over occupational health and safety).

Then there is the reactionary camp, who seem to be led by the unlikely figure of Kengo Kuma (though there are certainly many others). This camp is following Toyo Ito's Digital Tarzan theories (of the city as the interface between the digital and physical realms) to their logical conclusion: by treating architecture as both a membrane for the individual/virtual and individual/real. In other words, a thinking founded in Heidegger's forest clearing (see The End of Philosophy and The Task of Thinking) and Levinas' Other.

I find this the more attractive of the two, and the discussion revolves mostly around the 'architectural object' (see Rosin-Melser's and my own exchange) and the notion of 'specular/speculative architecture'. The only problem with this movement is that it is a reaction to the current conditions. As such, it limits itself to merely describing the present. Where are the architectural revolutionaries? Where are the forward thinkers and dreamers for tomorrow?

In closing, I make mention to MP's wordy manifesto (as soon as the blog gets a regular editor it will probably be rephrased).

anti-object #3

Guest post by Max Rosin-Melser.

In the second post on the book ‘Anti-Object’ [#1 here] Jack asked the question – what is an architectural object? For this third and final ‘Anti-Object’ post I would like to build on Jack’s question and ask, what is actually wrong with the architectural object? Kuma makes the claim that moving away from a focus on the ‘object’ in architecture is not only useful, but a manifestation of new, important trends in contemporary society linking in with new media and technologies. I would like to question this idea – Why is this move away from an object-oriented architecture essential? Where does this need originate from? And is our current state of object-oriented architectural production really failing us as a people (as Kuma quite broadly claims)?

I can’t help wondering if what Kuma is proposing is more of a theoretical idea out of step with what people actually want and with what has proven to be popular with buildings of the past. Now, this is not to say that architectural theories cannot challenge the current wants of society (no one is saying people should go live in suburbs of McMansions), but, the way Kuma stresses this need to move away from the object you would think it was actually doing us and society harm. Within each section of the book there is mention of Kuma proposing some change merely based on a desire for his building to ‘not resemble an object’. This begs the question – do we really need to be saved from the architectural object? What of good architectural objects? Yes there is a lot of crap out there, a lot of bad architecture, but there are also a lot of successful object oriented buildings in the world - See Herzog and De Meuron and the almost universally loved bird’s nest for the most conspicuous object oriented architecture of contemporary times. This building, through its very object-like properties (the ‘birds nest’) has been used by the Chinese government to distill and outwardly represent notions of growth and prosperity for its country. Could a Kuma building elicit the same emotive response in its users and the society as a whole?

The architect Peter Zumthor is similar to Kuma in his focus on the subject and the experiential properties of his buildings, but rather than engineering some sort of anti-object stance, prefers to look at atmospheres . He does not try to make the claim that the object is inherently ‘bad’, but rather looks at how this type and form can be worked to evoke certain atmospheres and emotions in its users. Yes, when Zumthor puts you in a black room with only a small punched out window (as below) towards the outside he is distancing us from our environment through the use of the ‘window frame’ – But cant that be worth it sometimes? We Australians who grew up with Glenn Murcutt’s maxim drilled into our heads of ‘prospect and refuge ’ might wonder – where do you find refuge in a glass ‘optical lens’ surrounded by water? Where is there room for these very human feelings and requirements of retreat and withdrawal within Kuma’s architectural theory?

Fundamentally, Kuma sees the architectural object as separate and detached from man and society, however, this over-simplifies the role that these object-oriented buildings play in our psyche. In contrast to Kuma’s stance, Charles Jencks embraces the notion of an object-oriented architecture and highlights in his book The Iconic Building the ability of these buildings to operate as a latent signifier of divergent and ambiguous meanings. In other words, the Sydney Opera House can, to one person represent the sails of a boat, to another it could evoke an image of clouds floating and to yet another it could be interpreted as turtles... well you get the idea. And it is that inherent fluidity of meaning that brings life to the building and allows for a growing dialogue between the building and society. These objects are not detached and separate from us, but rather made and re-made in a continual conversation of use and media over successive generations. In the end I feel there is an irony present in Kuma’s work, in that he is not making anti-objects, he is just making a different type of object, and when his discussion moves on from there I think it will be rather fascinating.

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.

anti-object #1

Guest post by Max Rosin-Melser.
This is the first of three posts Jack and I will be writing that focus on the book ‘Anti-Object: The dissolution and disintegration of Architecture’ by Kengo Kuma which is an AA publication that came out in late 2008. We feel it’s a pretty important read, posing some interesting questions about the current state and future direction of contemporary architecture. So, the first of these posts will take the form of a review of the material in the book – so all of you following along at home are in the know – and the next two posts will be responses to this content by Jack and myself.

Firstly, let me start by saying that this book has left me with many questions about just what exactly an ‘object’ in architecture really is, and if an architecture opposed to this concept is truly necessary and important for our times. Kuma most definitely thinks it is, saying:

“The individual is not an autonomous, solitary object but a thing of uncertain extent, with ambiguous boundaries. So too is matter, which loses much of its allure the moment it is reduced to an object, shorn of its viscosity, pressure and density. Both subject and matter resist their reduction into objects. Everything is interconnected and intertwined”

Kuma wants to create an architecture that breaks away from dividing subject and object, and bring about an architecture that works with the subject and operates almost as an open-ended, ambiguous filter to help connect them with the landscape of a given site. Kuma calls this filter a layered ‘feild’ or a ‘wilderness’ where the user engages with this landscape as a ‘body moving in time’. This is architecture as a temporal and vulnerable entity that becomes experiential in nature.

How, you might ask, does Kuma propose we go about making this inclusive field or ‘wilderness’? Well the answer lies in two interconnected directions – first, Kuma believes that it is not the framed window / wall, but rather the floor that mediates and creates positive relationships with the user and the outside environment, and second, by scrutinising material and building dimensions and their relation to the specifics of a given site - or as Kuma calls it ‘breaking down into particles’.


Kuma's own project "water / glass".

For the first point Kuma has this to add “All physical beings return to the floor form because they have to stand on a floor. Therefore, almost all possible relationships between the world and the subject are merely variations on the floor form”. The floor form is thus seen as more innate and also more flexible in how it allows people to engage with the landscape – it does not offer just one static and contained view of nature. Kuma explores this concept further in his work ‘water / glass’ through the use of a veranda ‘made of water’ that flows out into the sea and blurs the boundaries between the lower and upper planes of water, forming one continuous surface extending out into the landscape. The impacts of weather, time of day and wind all shift and modify this relationship so the architecture is seen as “responding to the changing moods of nature”.

"Detail of wall, the stone is cut into slices nearly as thin as wooden slats." The best way I can find to explain Kuma’s idea of ‘breaking down into particles’ is by relating an experience he cites in the book, one in which he experiments with extracting stones one by one from a masonry wall. What he found as he kept subtracting from this wall was that that the coherent mass of the ‘object’ / wall “wavered between being and representation, between its essential heaviness and its apparent lightness, between its opaque attribute and its actual transparency”. The wall is dissolved through "particlisation", with this being indicative of what Kuma hopes to achieve on the small scale of the material and also on the larger scale of the enclosure itself. It is within this dissolving that Kuma sees a rhythm, within the sparse subtraction of material / enclosure that a force tantamount to music is created and activated by its changing and multi-faceted relationship to the user and the landscape.

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?’.