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4 pdf reading esay
ineed
1- a brief analysis of each reading 150 word in etch reading
2-answer this Q
“Why have these essays been assigned together?
I
Fireworks, Manifesto, 1974.
The Architectural Paradox
1. Most people concerned with architecture feel some sort
of disillusion and dismay. None of the early utopian ideals
of the twentieth century has materialized! none of its social
aims has succeeded. Blurred by reality! the ideals have turned
into redevelopment nightmares and the aims into bureau
cratic policies. The split between social reality and utopian
dream has been total! the gap between economic constraints
and the illusion of all-solving technique absolute. Pointed
Space
out by critics who knew the limits of architectural remedies,
this historical split has now been bypassed by attempts to
reformulate the concepts of architecture. In the process, a
new split appears. More complex, it is not the symptom of
professional naivete or economic ignorance but the sign of a
fundamental question that lies in the very nature of archi
tecture and of its essential element: space. By focusing on
itself, architecture has entered an unavoidable paradox that
is more present in space than anywhere else: the impossibil
ity of questioning the nature of space and at the same time
experiencing a spatial praxis.
2. I have no intention of reviewing architectural trends and
their connection to the arts. My general emphasis on space
rather than on disciplines (art, architecture, semiology, etc.)
is not aimed at negating academic categorization. The merg
ing of disciplines is too worn a path to provide a stimulating
itinerary. Instead, I would like to focus attention on the
present paradox of space and on the nature of its terms, trying
to indicate how one might go beyond this self-contradiction,
even if the answer should prove intolerable. I begin by re
calling the historical context of this paradox. I will examine
first those trends that consider architecture as a thing of the
mind, as a dematerialized or conceptual discipline, with its
linguistic or morphological variations (the Pyramid); second,
empirical research that concentrates on the senses, on the
experience of space as well as on the relationship between
space and praxis (the Labyrinth); and third, the contradictory
nature of these two terms and the difference between the
means of escaping the paradox by shifting the actual nature
of the debate, as, for example, through politics, and the means
that alter the paradox altogether (the Pyramid and the
Labyrinth).
3. Etymologically, to define space means both II to make
space distinct” and lito state the precise nature of space.
”
Much of the current confusion about space can be illustrated
by this ambiguity. While art and architecture have been con
cerned essentially with the first sense, philosophy, mathe
matics, and physics have tried throughout history to give
interpretations to something variously described as a “ma
terial thing in which all material things are located /I or as
“something subjective with which the mind categorizes
things.” Remember: with Descartes ended the Aristotelian
tradition according to which space and time were /I cate
gories” that enabled the classification of “sensory knowl
edge./I Space became absolute. Object before the subject, it
dominated senses and bodies by containing them. Was space
inherent to the totality of what exists? This was the question
of space for Spinoza and Leibniz. Returning to the old notion
of category, Kant described space as neither matter nor the
set of objective relations between things but as an ideal in
ternal structure, an a priori consciousness, an instrument of
knowledge. Subsequent mathematical developments on
non-Euclidean spaces and their topologies did not eliminate
the philosophical discussions. These reappeared with the
widening gap between abstract spaces and society. But space
was generally accepted as a cosa mentaie, a sort of all-
The Architectural Paradox
28 29
Space
embracing set with subsets such as literary space, ideological
space, and psychoanalytical space.
4. Architecturally, to define space (to make space distinct)
literally meant “to determine boundaries.” Space had rarely
been discussed by architects before the beginning of the
twentieth century. But by 1915 it meant Raum with all its
overtones of German esthetics, with the notion of Raum
empfindung or “felt volume.” By 1923 the idea of felt space
had merged with the idea of composition to become a three
dimensional continuum, capable of metrical subdivision
that could be related to academic rules. From then on, ar
chitectural space was consistently seen as a uniformly ex
tended material to be modeled in various ways, and the
history of architecture as the history of spatial concepts.
From the Greek “power of interacting volumes” to the Ro
man “hollowed-out interior space,” from the modern “inter
action between inner and outer space” to the concept of
“transparency,” historians and theorists referred to space as
a three-dimensional lump of matter.
To draw a parallel between the philosophies
of a period and the spatial concepts of architecture is always
tempting, but never was it done as obsessively as during the
1930s. Giedion related Einstein’s theory of relativity to cub
ist painting, and cubist planes were translated into architec
ture in Le Corbusier’s Villa Stein at Garches. Despite these
space-time concepts, the notion of space remained that of a
simplistic and amorphous matter to be defined by its physical
boundaries. By the late 1960s, freed from the technological
determinants of the postwar period and aware of recent lin
guistic studies, architects talked about the square, the street,
and the arcade, wondering if these did not constitute a little
known code of space with its own syntax and meaning. Did
language precede these socioeconomic urban spaces, did it
accompany them, or did it follow them? Was space a condi
tion or a formulation? To say that language preceded these
spaces was certainly not obvious: human activities leave
traces that may precede language. So was there a relationship
between space and language, could one “read” a space? Was
there a dialectic between social praxis and spatial forms?
5. Yet the gap remained between ideal space (the product
of mental processes) and real space (the product of social
praxis). Although such a distinction is certainly not ideolog
ically neutral, we shall see that it is in the nature of archi
tecture. As a result, the only successful attempts to bridge
this philosophical gap were those that introduced historical
or political concepts such as “production,” in the wide sense
it had in Marx’s early texts. Much research in France and in
Italy opposed space II as a pure form” to space “as a social
product,” space “as an intermediary” to space “as a means
of reproduction of the mode of production.”
This politico-philosophical critique had the
advantage of giving an all-embracing approach to space,
avoiding the previous dissociation between the “particular”
(fragmented social space), the “general” (logico-mathemati
calor mental spaces), and the “singular” (physical and delin
eated spaces). But by giving an overall priority to historical
30 31 The Architectural Paradox
Space
processes, it often reduced space to one of the numerous
socioeconomic products that were perpetuating a political
status quo. 1
6. Before proceeding to a detailed examination of the am
bivalence of the definition of space, it is perhaps useful to
consider briefly this particular expression of space in archi
tecture. Its territory extends from an all-embracing Itevery
thing is architecture” to Hegel’s minimal definition. This
latter interpretation must be pointed out, for it describes a
difficulty that is constitutive to architecture. When Hegel
elaborated his aesthetic theory,7- he conventionally distin
guished five arts and gave them an order: architecture, sculp
ture, painting, music, and poetry. He started with
architecture because he thought it preceded the others in
both conceptual and historical terms. Hegel’s uneasiness in
these first pages is striking. His embarrassment did not really
proceed from his conservative classification but was caused
by a question that had haunted architects for centuries: were
the functional and technical characteristics of a house or a
temple the means to an end that excluded those very char
acteristics? Where did the shed end and architecture begin?
Was architectural discourse a discourse about whatever did
not relate to the “building” itself? Hegel concluded in the
affirmative: architecture was whatever in a building did not
point to utility. Architecture was a sort of Itartistic supple
ment” added to the simple building. But the difficulty of
such an argument appears when one tries to conceive of a
building that escapes the utility of space, a building that
would have no other purpose than “architecture.”
Although such a question may be irrelevant,
it finds a surprising echo in the present search for architec
tural autonomy. After more than half a century of scientific
pretense, of system theories that defined it as the intersection
of industrialization, sociology, politics, and ecology, archi
tecture wonders if it can exist without haVing to find its
meaning or its justification in some purposeful exterior need.
The Pyramid: Stating the Nature of Space (or The Dematerialization
of Architecture)
7. Little concemed with Hegel’s “artistic supplement/ ar
chitects have nevertheless not regarded the constructed
bUilding as the sole and inevitable aim of their activity. They
have shown a renewed interest in the idea of playing an active
role in fulfilling ideological and philosophical functions with
respect to architecture. Just as El Lissitzky and the Vesnin
brothers sought to deny the importance of realizing a work
and stressed an architectural attitude, so the avant-garde
feels reasonably free to act within the realm of concepts.
Comparable to the early conceptual artists’ rejection of the
art commodity market and its alienating effects, the archi
tects’ position seems justified by the very remote possibility
they had of building anything other than a “mere reflection
of the prevalent mode of production.”
Moreover, historical precedents exist to give
enough credibility to what could paradoxically be described
33 The Architectural Paradox32
Space
either as a withdrawal from reality or as a takeover of new
and unknown territories. “What is architecture?” asked
BoulIee. “WillI define it with Vitruviusas the art of building?
No. This definition contains a crass error. Vitruvius takes
the effect for the cause. One must conceive in order to make.
Our forefathers only built their hut after they had conceived
its image. This production of the mind, this creation is what
constitutes architecture, that which we now can define as
the art to produce any building and bring it to perfection.
The art of building is thus only a secondary art that it seems
appropriate to call the scientific part of architecture.”3 At a
time when architectural memory rediscovers its role, archi
tectural history, with its treatises and manifestos, has been
conveniently confirming to architects that spatial concepts
were made by the writings and drawings of space as much as
by their built translations.
The questions, “is there any reason why one
cannot proceed from design that can be constructed to design
that concerns itself only with the ideology and concept of
architecture?” and architectural work consists ot ques
tioning the nature of architecture, what prevents us from
making this questioning a work of architecture in itself ?”4
were already rhetorical questions in 1972. The renewed im
portance given to conceptual aims in architecture quickly
became established. The medium used for the communica
tion of concepts became architecture; information was ar
chitecture; the attitude was architecture; the written
program or brief was architecture; gossip was architecture;
production was architecture; and inevitably, the architect
was architecture. Escaping the predictable ideological com
promises of building, the architect could finally achieve the
sensual satisfaction that the making of material objects no
longer provided.
8. The dematerialization of architecture into the realm of
concepts was more the characteristic of a period than of any
particular avant-garde group. Thus it developed in various
directions and struck movements as ideologically opposed
as, for example, “radical architecture”s and “rational archi
tecture.”6 But the question it asked was fundamental: if
everything was architecture, by virtue of the architect’s de
cision, what distinguished architecture from any other hu
man activity? This quest for identity revealed that the
architect’s freedom did not necessarily coincide with the
freedom of architecture.
If architecture seemed to have gained free
dom from the socioeconomic constraints of building pro
cesses, any radical counter-designs and manifestos were
inevitably reinstated in the commercial circuits of galleries
or magazines. Like conceptual art in the mid-1960s, archi
tecture seemed to have gained autonomy by opposing the
institutional framework. But in the process it had become
the institutional opposition, thus growing into the very thing
it tried to oppose.
Although some architects, following a polit
ical analysis that we shall soon describe, were in favor of
doing away with architecture altogether, the search for au·
”
tonom~ inevitably turned back toward architecture itself, as
35 The Architectural Paradox34
Space
no other context would readily provide for it. The question
became: “Is there an architectural essence, a being that tran
scends all social, political, and economic systems?” This
ontological bias injected new blood into a concept that al
ready had been well aired by art theorists. Investigations into
Hegel’s “supplement” received the support of structural lin
guistic studies in France and Italy. Analogies with language
appeared en masse, some useful, some particularly naive and
misleading. Among these linguistic analogies, two figure
prominently.
9. The first theory claims that the Hegelian “supplement,”
added to the simple building and constitutive of architecture,
is immediately struck by some semantic expansion that
would force this architectural supplement to be less a piece
of architecture than the representation of something else.
Architecture is then nothing but the space of representation.
As soon as it is distinguished from the simple building, it
represents something other than itself: the social structure,
the power of the King, the idea of God, and so on.
The second theory questions an understand
ing of architecture as a language that refers to meanings
outside itself. It refuses the interpretation of a three-dimen
sional translation of social values, for architecture would
then be nothing but the linguistic product of social deter
minants. It thus claims that the architectural object is pure
language and that architecture is an endless manipulation of
the grammar and syntax of the architectural sign. Rational
architecture, for example, becomes a selected vocabulary of
architectural elements of the past, with their oppositions,
contrasts, and redistributions. Not only does it refer to itself
and to its own history, but function-the existential justifi
cation of the work-becomes virtual rather than real. So the
language is closed in on itself, and architecture becomes a
truly autonomous organism. Forms do not follow functions
but refer to other forms, and functions relate to symbols.
Ultimately architecture frees itself from reality altogether.
Form does not need to call for external justifications. In a
critical article in Oppositions, Manfredo Tafuri can thus de
scribe Aldo Rossi’s architecture as “a universe of carefully
selected signs, within which the law of exclusion dominates,
and in fact is the controlling expression, II and the trend it
represents as “l’Architecture dans le Boudoir” because the
circle drawn around linguistic experimentation reveals a
pregnant affinity with the obseSSively rigorous writings of
the Marquis de Sade. 7
Freed from reality, independent of ideology,
architectural values are striving toward a purity unattained
since the Russian formalist criticism of the 1920s, when it
was argued that the only valid object of literary criticism was
the literary text. Here, the tautology of architecture-that is,
an architecture that describes itself-becomes a syntax of
empty signs, often derived from a selective historicism that
concentrates on moments of history: the early modern move
ment, the Roman monument, the Renaissance palace, the
castle. Transmitted through history, and removed from the
constraints of their time, can these signs, these diagrams of
spaces become the generative matrices of today’s work?
The Architectural Paradox37S6
Space
10. They might. Architectural theory shares with art theory
a peculiar characteristic: it is prescriptive. So the series of
signs and articulations that has just been described may un
doubtedly prove a useful model for architects engaged in a
perpetual search for new support disciplines, even if it is not
clear whether systems of nonverbal signs, such as space,
proceed from concepts similar to verbal systems. However,
the real importance of this research lies in the question it
asks about the nature of architecture rather than in the mak
ing of architecture. This is not without recalling the perverse
and hypothetical search for the very origins of architecture.
Remember: at the outset, does architecture produce copies
or models? If it cannot imitate an order, can it constitute
one, whether it be the world or society? Must architecture
create its own model, if it has no created model? Positive
answers inevitably imply some archetype. But as this arche
type cannot exist outside architecture, architecture must
produce one itself. It thus becomes some sort of an essence
that precedes existence. So the architect is once again lithe
person who conceives the form of the building without ma
nipulating materials himself.” He conceives the pyramid,
this ultimate model of reason. Architecture becomes a cosa
mentale and the forms conceived by the architect ensure the
domination of the idea over matter.
The Labyrinth: Making Space Distinct (or The Experience of Space)
11. Should I intensify the quarantine in the chambers of the
Pyramid of reason? Shall I sink to depths where no one will
be able to reach me and understand me, living among ab
stract connections more frequently expressed by inner mon
ologues than by direct realities? Shall architecture, which
started with the building of tombs, retum to the Tomb, to
the etemal silence of finally transcended historyt Shall ar
chitecture perform at the service of illusory functions and
build virtual spaces~ My voyage into the abstract realm of
language, into the dematerialized world of concepts, meant
the removal of architecture from its intricate and convo
luted element: space. Removal from the exhilarating differ
ences between the apse and the nave of Ely Cathedral,
between Salisbury Plain and Stonehenge, between the Street
and my Living Room. Space is real, for it seems to affect my
senses long before my reason. The materiality of my body
both coincides with and struggles with the materiality of
space. My body carries in itself spatial properties and spatial
determination: up, down, right, left, symmetry, dissymme
try. It hears as much as it sees. Unfolding against the pro
jections of reason, against the Absolute Truth, against the
Pyramid, here is the Sensory Space, the Labyrinth, the Hole.
Dislocated and dissociated by language or culture or econ
omy into the specialized ghettos of sex and mind, Soho and
Bloomsbury, 42nd Street and West 40th Street, here is where
my body tries to rediscover its lost unity, its energies and
impulses, its rhythms and its flux …
12. This purely sensory approach has been a recurrent theme
in this century’s understanding and appreciation of space. It
is not necessary to expand at length on the precedents wit
38 39 The Architectural Paradox
Space
nessed by twentieth-century architecture. Suffice it to say
that current conversation seems to fluctuate between (aJ the
German esthetic overtones of the Raumempfindung theory,
whereby space is to be 1/felt” as something affecting the inner
nature of man by a symbolic Einfiihlung, and (b) an idea that
echoes Schlemmer’s work at the Bauhaus, whereby space
was not only the medium of experience but also the mater
ialization of theory. For example, the emphasis given to
movement found in dance the “elemental means for the
realization of space-creative impulses,” for dance could ar
ticulate and order space. The parallel made between the dan
cer’s movements and the more traditional means of defining
and articulating space, such as walls or columns, is impor
tant. When the dancers Trisha Brown and Simone Forti re
introduced this spatial discussion in the mid-1960s, the
relationship between theory and practice, reason and percep
tion, had to take another tum, and the concept of theoretical
praxis could not be simply indicative. There was no way in
space to follow the art-language practice. If it could be argued
that the discourse about art was art and thus could be exhib
ited as such, the theoretical discourse about space certainly
was not space.
The attempt to trigger a new perception of
space reopened a basic philosophical question. Remember:
you are inside an enclosed space with equal height and width.
Do your eyes instruct you about the cube merely by noticing
it, without giving any additional interpretation? No. You
don’t really see the cube. You may see a comer, or a side, or
the ceilin& but never all defining surfaces at the same time.
You touch a wall, you hear an echo. But how do you relate
all these perceptions to one single object? Is it through an
operation of reason?
13. This operation of reason, which precedes the perception
of the cube as a cube, was mirrored by the approach of con
cept-performance artists. While your eyes were giving in
structions about successive parts of the cube, allowing you
to form the concept of cube, the artist was giving instructions
about the concept of cube, stimulating your senses through
the intermediary of reason. This reversal, this mirror image,
was important, for the interplay between the new perception
of “performance” space and the rational means at the origin
of the piece was typically one aspect of the architectural
process: the mechanics of perception of a distinct space, that
is the complete space of the performance, with the move
ments, the thoughts, the received instructions of the actors,
as well as the social and physical context in which they
performed. But the most interesting part of such performance
was the underlying discussion on the “nature of space” in
general, as opposed to the shaping and perception of distinct
spaces in particular.
It is in recent works that the recurring etym
ological distinction appears at its strongest. Reduced to the
cold simplicity of six planes that define the boundaries of a
more or less regular cube, the series of spaces designed by
Bruce Nauman, Doug Wheeler, Robert Iwin, or Michael
Asher do not play with elaborate spatial articulations. Their
emphasis is elsewhere. By restricting visual and physical
4140 The Architectural Paradox
Space
perception to the faintest of all stimulations, they tum the
expected experience of the space into something altogether
different. The almost totally removed sensory definition in
evitably throws the viewers back on themselves. In “de
prived space,” to borrow the terminology of Germano Celant,
the “participants” can only find themselves as the subject,
aware only of their own fantasies and pulsations, able only
to react to the low-density signals of their own bodies. The
materiality of the body coincides with the materiality of the
space. By a series of exclusions that become significant only
in opposition to the remote exterior space and social context,
the subjects only “experience their own experience.”
14. Whether such spaces might be seen as reminiscent of the
behaviorist spaces of the beginning of the century, where
reactions were hopefully triggered, or as the new echo of the
Raumempflndung theory, now cleaned-up of its moral and
esthetic overtones, is of little theoretical importance. What
matters is their double content: for their way to “make space
distinct” (to define space in particular) is only there to throw
one back on the interpretation of the “nature of space” itself.
As opposed to the previously described pyramid of reason,
the dark comers of experience are not unlike a labyrinth
where all sensations, all feelings are enhanced, but where no
overview is present to provide a clue about how to get out.
Occasional consciousness is of little help, for perception in
the Labyrinth presupposes immediacy. Unlike Hegel’s clas
sical distinction between the moment of perception and the
moment of experience (when one’s consciousness makes a
new object out of a perceived one), the metaphorical Laby
rinth implies that the first moment of perception carries the
experience itself.
It is hardly surprising, therefore, that there
may be no way out of the Labyrinth. Denis Hollier, in his
book on Georges Bataille, 8 points out that from Bacon to
Leibniz the Labyrinth was linked with the desire to get out,
and science was seen as the means to find an exit. Rejecting
such an interpretation, Bataille suggested that its only effect
was to transform the Labyrinth into a banal prison. The
traditional meaning of the metaphor was reversed: one never
knows whether one is inside or not, since one cannot grasp
it in one look. Just as language gives us words that encircle
us but that we use in order to break their surround, the
Labyrinth of experience was full of openings that did not tell
whether they opened toward its outside or its inside.
The Pyramid and the Labyrinth: The Paradox of Architecture
15. To single out particular areas of concern, such as the
rational play of language as opposed to the experience of the
senses, would be a tedious game if it were to lead to a naive
confrontation between the mind and the body. The architec
tural avant-garde has fought often enough over alternatives
that appeared as opposites-structure and chaos, ornament
and purity, permanence and change, reason and intuition.
And often enough it has been shown that such alternatives
were in fact complementary: our analysis of a demateriali
zation of architecture in its ontological form (the Pyramid)
The Architectural Paradox
4342
Space
and of a sensual experience Ithe Labyrinth) is no different.
But if the existence of such an equation does not raise doubts
over its complementarity, it certainly raises questions about
how such equations can go beyond the vicious circle of terms
that speak only of themselves.
The answer may lie in the context in which
such an equation takes place. A common accusation of anal
yses or even of works that concentrate on the specific nature
of architecture is that they are “parallel/’ that is, they fold
and unfold in some Panglossian world where social and eco
nomic forces are conveniently absent. Not affecting the de
termining forces of production, they constitute harmless
forms of private expression. We shall therefore briefly con
sider the ambiguous particularities of the relationships be
tween architecture and politics.
16. These have been well researched in the past few years.
The role of architecture and planning has been analyzed in
terms of a projection on the ground of the images of social
institutions, as a faithful translation of the structures of
society into buildings or cities. Such studies underline the
difficulty architecture has in acting as a political instrument.
Recalling the nostalgic and attenuated cry of the Russian
revolutionary” social condensers” of the 1920s, some advo
cated the use of space as a peaceful tool of social transfor
mation, as a means of changing the relation between the
individual and society by generating new lifestyles. But the
“clubs” and community buildings proposed not only re
quired an existing revolutionary society but also a blind be
lief in an interpretation of behaviorism according to which
individual behavior could be influenced by the organization
of space. Aware that spatial organization may temporarily
modify individual or group behavior, but does not imply that
it will change the socioeconomic structure of a reactionary
society, architectural revolutionaries looked for better
grounds. Their attempts to find a socially relevant, if not
revolutionary, role for architecture culminated in the years
following the May 1968 events with “guerrilla” buildings,
whose symbolic and exemplary value lay in their seizure of
urban space and not in the design of what was built. On the
cultural front, plans for a surrealistic destruction of estab
lished value systems were devised by Italian “radical” de
signers. This nihilistic prerequisite for social and economic
change was a desperate attempt to use the architect’s mode
of expression to denounce institutional trends by translating
them into architectural terms, ironically “verifying where
the system was going” by designing the cities of a desperate
future.
Not surprisingly, it was the question of the
production system that finally led to more realistic propos
als. Aimed at redistributing the capitalistic division of labor,
these proposals sought a new understanding of the techni
cians’ role in building, in terms of a responsible partnership
directly involved in the production cycle, thus shifting the
concept of architecture toward the general organization of
building processes.
44 45 The Architectural Paradox
Space
17. Yet it is the unreal (or unrealistic) position of the artist
or architect that may be its very reality. Except for the last
attitude, most political approaches suffered from the pre
dictable isolation of schools of architecture that tried to offer
their environmental knowledge to the revolution. Hegel’s
architecture, the “supplement/’ did not seem to have the
right revolutionary edge. Or did it? Does architecture, in its
long-established isolation, contain more revolutionary
power than its numerous transfers into the objective realities
of the building industry and social housing? Does the social
function of architecture lie in its very lack of function? In
fact, architecture may have little other ground.
as the surrealists could not find the right
compromise between scandal and social acceptance, archi
tecture seems to have little choice between autonomy and
commitment, between the radical anachronism of Schiller’s
“courage to talk of roses” and society. If the architectural
piece renounces its autonomy by recognizing its latent ideo
logical and financial dependency, it accepts the mechanisms
of society. If it sanctuarizes itself in an art-for-art’s-sake po
sition, it does not escape classification among existing ideo
logical compartments.
So architecture seems to survive only when
it saves its nature by negating the form that society expects
of it. I would therefore suggest that there has never been any
reason to doubt the necessity of architecture, for the neces
sity of architecture is its non-necessity. It is useless, but
radically 80. Its radicalism constitutes its very strength in a
society where profit is prevalent. Rather than an obscure
artistic supplement or a cultural justification for financial
manipulations, architecture is not unlike fireworks, for these
“empirical apparitions/’ as Adorno puts it, “produce a de
light that cannot be sold or bought, that has no exchange
value and cannot be integrated in the production cycle. “9
18. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that the non-necessity
of architecture, its necessary loneliness, throws it back on
itself. If its role is not defined by society, architecture will
have to define it alone. Until 1750, architectural space could
rely on the paradigm of the ancient precedent. After that
time, until well into the twentieth century, this classical
source of unity progressively became the socially determined
program. In view of the present-day polarization of ontolog
ical discourse and sensual experience, I am well aware that
any suggestion that they now form the inseparable but mu
tually exclusive terms of architecture requires some eluci
dation. This must begin with a description of the apparent
impossibility of escaping from the paradox of the Pyramid of
concepts and the Labyrinth of experience, of immaterial ar
chitecture as a concept and of material architecture as a
presence.
To restate my point, the paradox is not about
the impossibility of perceiving both architectural concept
six faces of the cube) and real space at the same time
about the impossibility of questioning the nature of space
and at the same time making or experiencing a real space.
Unless we search for an escape from architecture into the
general organization of building processes, the paradox per-
The Architectural Paradox4746
Space
sists: architecture is made of two terms that are interdepen
dent but mutually exclusive. Indeed, architecture
constitutes the reality of experience while this reality gets
in the way of the overall vision. Architecture constitutes the
abstraction of absolute truth, while this very truth gets in
the way of feeling. We cannot both experience and think that
we experience. liThe concept of dog does not bark”;l0 the
concept of space is not in space.
In the same way, the achievement of archi
tectural reality (building) defeats architectural theory while
at the same time being a product of it. So theory and praxis
may be dialectic to one another, but in space, the translation
of the concept, the overcoming of the abstraction in reality,
involves the dissolution of the dialectic and an incomplete
statement. This means, in effect, that, perhaps for the £lIst
time in history, architecture can never be. The effect of the
great battles of social progress is obliterated, and so is the
security of archetypes. Defined by its questioning, architec
ture is always the expression of a lack, a shortcoming, a
noncompletion. It always misses something, either reality
or concept. Architecture is both being and nonbeing. The
only alternative to the paradox is silence, a final nihilistic
statement that might provide modern architectural history
with its ultimate punchline, its self-annihilation.
19. Before leaving this brief exploration of architecture as
paradox, it is tempting to suggest a way of accepting the
paradox while refuting the silence it seems to imply. This
conclusion may be intolerable to philosophers, in that it
alters the subject of architecture, you and L It may be intol
erable to scientists who want to master the subject of science.
It may be intolerable to artists who want to objectify the
subject.
Let us first examine the Labyrinth. In the
course of this argument, it has been implied that the Laby
rinth shows itself as a slow history of space, but that a total
revelation of the Labyrinth is historically impossible because
no point of transcendence in time is available. One can par
ticipate in and share the fundamentals of the Labyrinth, but
one’s perception is only part of the Labyrinth as it manifests
itself. One can never see it in totality, nor can one express it.
One is condemned to it and cannot go outside and see the
whole. But remember: Icarus flew away, toward the sun. So
after all, does the way out of the Labyrinth lie in the making
of the Pyramid, through a projection of the subject toward
some transcendental objectivity? Unfortunately not. The
Labyrinth cannot be dominated. The top of the Pyramid is
an imaginary place, and Icarus fell down: the nature of the
Labyrinth is such that it entertains dreams that include the
dream of the Pyramid.
20. But the real importance of the Labyrinth and of its spatial
experience lies elsewhere. The Pyramid, the analysis of the
architectural object, the breaking down of its forms and ele
ments, all cut away from the question of the subject. Along
with the spatial praxis mentioned earlier, the sensual archi
tecture reality is not experienced as an abstract object already
transformed by consciousness but as an immediate and con
49 The Architectural Paradox48
Space
crete human activity-as a praxis, with all its subjectivity.
This importance of the subject is in clear opposition to all
philosophical and historical attempts to objectify the im
mediate perception of reality, for example, in the relations
of production. To talk about the Labyrinth and its praxis
means to insist here on its subjective aspects: it is personal
and requires an immediate experience. Opposed to Hegel’s
and close to Bataille’s “interior experience,” this
immediacy bridges sensory pleasure and reason. It introduces
new articulations between the inside and the outside, be
tween private and public spaces. It suggests new oppositions
between dissociated terms and new relations between ho
mogeneous spaces. This immediacy does not give precedence
to the experiential term, however. For it is only by recogniz
ing the architectural rule that the subject of space will reach
the depth of experience and its sensuality. Like eroticism,
architecture needs both system and excess.
21. This “experience” may have repercussions that go far
beyond man as its “subject.” Tom between rationality and
the demand for irrationality, our present society moves to
ward other attitudes. If system plus excess is one of its symp
toms, we may soon have to consider architecture as the
indispensable complement to this changing praxis. In the
past, architecture gave linguistic metaphors (the Castle, the
Structure, the Labyrinth) to society. It may now provide the
cultural modeL
As long as social practice the paradox
of ideal and real space, imagination-interior eXpelneJnCI~-
may be the only means to transcend it. By changing the
prevalent attitudes toward space and its subject, the dream
of the step beyond the paradox can even provide the condi
tions for renewed social attitudes. Just as eroticism is the
pleasure of excess rather than the excess of pleasure, so the
solution of the paradox is the imaginary blending of the
architecture rule and the experience of pleasure.
50 51 The Architectural Paradox
Notes
The Architectural Paradox
1. For these issues, see the interpretation offered by Henri
Lefebvre in La production de I’espace, (Paris: Editions Anthrapos,
1973), and the texts of Castells and Utopie. See also Bernard
Tschumi, “Flashback,” on the politics of space, in Architectural
Design, October-November 1975.
2. Friedrich Hegel, The Philosophy of Fin e Art, vol. 1 (London:
G. Bell and Sons, Ltd, 1920).
3. Etienne-Louis Boullee, Essai sur I ‘Art, ed. Perouse de
Montclos (Paris: Herman, 1968).
4. On the ideological crisis of architecture and the emergence
of radical architecture, see Germano Celant (quoted here) in The
New Italian Landscape (New York: Museum of Modem Art, 1972),
320.
Notes
5. Originated in Florence from 1963 to 1971 by groups such
as Superstudio, Archizoom, UFO, and so forth, radical architecture
explored the destruction of culture and its artifacts. “The ultimate
end of modern architecture is the elimination of architecture alto
gether” (Archizoom Associates).
6. One of the first and most significant events of rational
architecture was the XV Milan Triennale, organized by AIdo Rossi,
whose catalogue, edited by Franco Angeli, bore the title of Archi
tettura Razionale (Milan: F. Angeli, 1973).
7. “The return to language is a proof of failure. It is necessary
to examine to what such a failure is due to the intrinsic
character of the architectural discipline and to what degree it is due
to a still unresolved ambiguity.” Manfredo TaIuri, Oppositions 3,
May 1974, where the author develops a historical critique of tradi
tional approaches to theory and shifts from a central focus on the
criticism of architecture to the criticism of ideology.
8. Denis Hollier, La Prise de la Concorde (Paris: Gallimard,
1974), the reading of which suggested the opposition between the
labyrinth and the pyramid. See also Georges Bataille, Eroticism
(London: Calder, 1962) and “L’Experience Interieure,” in Oeuvres
Completes (Paris: Gallimard, 1971).
9. Bernard Tschumi, “Fireworks,” 1974, extract from A
Space: A Thousand Words (London: Royal College of Art Gallery,
1975) “Yes, just as all the eroticforces contained in your movement
have been consumed for nothing, architecture must be conceived,
erected and burned in vain. The greatest architecture of all is the
fireworker’s: it perfectly shows the gratuitous consumDtion of
”
10. B. Spinoza (1622-1677), quoted by Henri Lefebvre in con
versation with the author, Paris, 1972.
Architecture and Transgression
1. London, 1975. With Peter Eisenman, RoseLee Goldberg,
Peter Cook, Colin Rowe, John Stezaker, Bernard Tschumi, Cedric
Price, Will Alsop, Charles Jencks, and Joseph Rykwert, among
others.
2. Cf. G. W. F. The Philosophy of Fine Art, vol. 1
(London: G. Bell and Sons, Ltd, 1920).
3. See also such magazines as Casabella and Architectural
Design for their documentation of the work of Superstudio, Archi
zoom, Hans Hollein, Wal ter Pichler, Raimund Abraham, and so
forth.
4. Cf. Architettura Razionale, (Milan: Franco Angeli, 1973).
5. Cf. A Space: A Thousand Words (London: Royal College
of Art Gallery, 1975); The Chronicle of Space, documenting student
work done in the Diploma School of the Architectural Association,
London, from 1974-1975; the “Real Space” conference at the Ar
chitectural Association with Germano Daniel Buren, Brian
Eno, and others.
6. It is not necessary to expatiate at length on the twentieth
century precedents. Suffice it to say that current discourse seems
to fluctuate between the 1910 German aesthetic overtones of the
Raumempfindung theory, whereby space is to be “felt” as some
262 263 Not es
