I will be posting several new essays and ideas in the next few days! Sorry for the Hiatus, but contrary to our virtual lives, real life does occur from time to time. It’s ON! Also, look out for And//Or…details soon!

(Design 7 - Summer 2011 @ FIU co-taught with Malik Benjamin)

“Since the recent rediscovery of the street as the core element of all urbanism, the simplest solution to this complex and ambiguous condition would be to undo the ‘mistakes’ of the fifties and sixties and to build again along the plot lines, as a sign of a regained historical consciousness”.

- Rem Koolhaas, IBA 1987 - KOCH-/FRIEDRICHSTRASSE, BLOCK 4 Proposal, 1988 

“The relationships and affairs of the typical metropolitan (environment) are usually so varied and complex that without the strictest punctuality in promises and services the whole structure would break down into an inextricable chaos. Above all, this necessity is brought about by the aggregation of so many people with such differentiated interest, who must integrate their relation and activities into a highly complex organism”.                                                                                         

 - Georg Simmel, The Metropolis and Mental Life, 1903

Abstract:

This class proposes a speculative design-build studio, which investigates US-41 that runs through Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, and ends in Michigan in cul-de-sac. This street/road/highway is not only Calle Ocho in Miami and Lake Shore Drive in Chicago, but allows for an urban analysis of the conditions which arise along its axis and also situates contemporary urbanism in a realm of situationist possibility through the speculative proposal of engaging it through a vehicle; and with the end result being far more engaged with a culture, than the vehicular studies of the 1960s and 70s (i.e. Robert Simthson’s Monuments of Passaic, Ventrui Scott-Brown’s Learning from Las Vegas, as well as Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles and his book, Los Angeles and its Four Ecologies). Through a careful introduction to some of the theories and traveling urbanism’s of the past 50 years, as well as an architectural production of a M.U.D. (Mobile Urban Device in the form of a trailer) and the production of script called M.A.P.(s) (Mobile Architectural Planning Scripts), this studio will engage with the emerging nature of speculative architecture, in the form of performative mobile urbanism. 

This studio would operate in an interesting area between the academy and the do-it-yourself. This studio is proposed to work with the Department of Urban Speculation, from the University of Illinois at Chicago, almost as urban artifact and explorer. Dept.U.S. is headed by Assistant Professor Alex Lehnerer and Meghan Funk, Adjunct Faculty, at U.I.C. Through meetings, we have established the best institutional scenario to engage this studio would be an F.I.U. credited seminar or studio class, with the Dept.US structuring their trip down from Michigan to Miami based on our drawings for their trailer (MUD) and performing our script (MAPS), culminating in an exhibition and lecture at F.I.U. in August 2011. 

“As opposed to spectacle, Situationist culture, when put into practice, will introduce total participation. As opposed to the preservation of art, it will involve direct organization of the lived moment”.[1]

-        Guy Debord

“Individualist culture is at an end, its institutions are exhausted. The present , task of the artist can only be to prepare the way for a future mass culture. For’ if there is still to be any talk of culture it will have to carry a mass society, and , then the means can be sought only within mechanization. The shaping of the .’ material environment and the liberation and organization of everyday life are, the points of departure for new cultural forms”.[2]

-        Constan Nieuwenhuys

In regards to the idea of the instantaneous, characterizing this concept through its material realization and its temporal quality, focuses more on attainability, constructability, and issues pertaining to the real. The instant as played out through the work of the Situationaist and the Metabolists, although also related to the real, was more closely related to affect the instant had on our psychological urban existence (both individual and collective), more directly, the virtual. Kenzo Tange visionary megastructures allowed for an immediate future to be projected onto the Tokyo Bay, one that was purely formal and formally pure. In the Western Hemisphere, specifically Paris, the Situationists were conducting urban experiments to re-propose how we as individuals break our societal bonds with Capitalism through a derive or our drifting (albeit pointless sometimes) through an urban environment. The resultant urbanisms of both the Situationists and the Metabolists activated architecture on not only an urban formal level, but on a virtually active level, both detouring the status quo way of passively ‘existing’ with ways to actively ‘live’.

The Japanese Metabolist movement dealt modern architecture an interesting blow: exposing its inadequacies to house society autonomously of its cities, they proposed to integrate society and their architectures into rationally planned megastructures based on traces of their cities. Reyner Baham, in his seminal Megastructure’s text, states that, “The sense of scale is unnerving; so is the formal control over all the parts of the professedly aformal and uncontrollable megaform”.[3] This statement sheds a bit of light as to the impact of the Metabolist project on an international community, seeing itself played out in proposals in the East, as well as the West (namely Kenzo Tange’s Boston Harbor Project). The sheer number of inhabitants and affect to the cities around it made metabolism able to project new and visionary ideas onto societies, virtually. The control incorporated into both the design and implementation of these mega-cities showed how an integrated city into a mega-structure could in fact solve societal problems on health and overgrowth, with rigorously structured plans.

Conversely, Guy Debord and Constant Nieuwenhuys, along with the Situationist International, proposed rigorously un-planned, undirected social environments that fostered intensity and complexity of contemporary life, and embedded these functions into their architectural and urban proposals.

Guy Debord’s quote at the beginning of my essay exemplifies some of the strongly held ideals of the Situationists, namely their integration of dynamic life into the vehicle of artistic production. Through exposing the spectacle of capitalism, as well as the bourgeoisie’s preoocupation with the socially removed genius artistic production that they commissioned throughout Western History, they could define art in the new city as living ones own life. Debord’s proposition to destabilize urban life through LSD induced drifting in urban contexts and finding new ways to traverse, annotate, and present maps, allowed for a cohesive vision of chaotic existence with an equally intense and rigorous way to present it. The manifested force of a social experiment put into words and acted out showed resiliency against the status quo, and the ability to change our urban existence in an instant through a fleeting thought or drug use. This truly allowed for an interaction of the real through actions played out in a virtual or parallel act. 

Constant’s New Babylon, dealt specifically with a re-proposition of life into a tabula raza, not unlike the autonomous free standing housing blocks of 1940s and 1950s post-war urbanism, yet literally structured through a detournement from typical bourgeois artistic production into lived dynamic experience, through introducing ephemeral housing sequences into New Babylon. These sequences, unable to be described as permanent housing, were more like arenas for interaction and expression, albeit possibly predatory (as in taking over other’s space). “The function of dwelling is adapted to this adventurous and dynamic life…it can scarcely be planned any longer to cater for permanent dwelling”, states Constant.[4] Adaptation to contemporary life serves the meta-purpose of not planning lives, just planning spaces, not in a modernist universal sense, but in a post-modern relative one. Whereas Debord is more centered upon the experience of the existing city being detoured through the way you interact with it, Constant gave the user a new space abandoning the old city embedded with the possibility of this new interaction.

The differences between the Metabolist and Situationist view of the city are numerable, yet their ability to comment on changing society was no doubt cross-cultural, cross-generational, and cross-regional. The notion of instantly affectual relationships with your urban environment be they the Tokyo Bay Project, New Babylon, or the Naked City, gave way to the possibility of re-envisioning the society through and adjacent architecture developed to suit it, not house it. Kenzo Tange’s proposals were modernist in question, but not in answer – they responded to social crises but did not let social crises determine what an architecture could be. Instead, he answered how architecture can change a society, not subtly. The subtle drift of the Situationist removed itself from the modern monologue of universality and rationality, settling on counter-intuitive and organic ways of creating a dialogue with the urban. In both instances, these idealists realized that it would be pathological to keep asking the same questions or giving the same answers, and expecting different outcomes, hence why they changed both what they were doing and why they were doing it. In essence, it was an ideological detournment by the Japanese and the French, subverting the accepted cultural framework of modernism, to suit the needs of contemporary people and to erode the stranglehold modernism had on society.

The engagement with a virtual reality, not yet realized or only hinted at through preemptive actions, bridges a cultural gap between these architects’ ideas on the future. Through their careful, as well as diligently chaotic, planning methods, each was able to achieve a certain level of manipulation to the theoretical landscape, as well as built environment, related to contemporary architecture. The questions and answers that each were able to propose allowed the discipline of architecture breathing room from the end of modernism, and at the same time would enact a change in climate that would help bring about new ideas in contemporary architecture. In a way, each group were trailblazers for a destabilized discipline that exists today. Through accepting the messiness of our contemporary cities, they were not only able to rethink our messy existence, but also make sense of an undefined role for new architecture and architects.

[1] Guy Debord, ‘Situationsts: International Manifesto’, (Paris:1960). Pg. 173

[2] Constant Nieuwenhuys, “New Babylon (excerpt)” (Paris:1960). Pg. 177

[3] Reyner Banham, ‘Megastructures’, (London:196X-197X). pg. 54

[4]  Constant Nieuwenhuys, “New Babylon (excerpt)” (Paris:1960). Pg. 178

“We no longer feel ourselves to be the men of the cathedrals or ancient moot halls, but the men of…railway stations, gint roads, colossal harbours, glittering arcades…We must invent and rebuild ex novo our modern city like an immense and tumultuous shipyard, active, mobile and everywhere dynamic, and the modern building like a gigantic machine”.

-Sant’Elia, Messagio [i]

“The straight line enters into all human history, into all human aim, into every human act”.

Le Corbusier. The City of Tomorrow [ii]

Notions of temporality, in both an experientially qualitative sense, as well as a materially productive one, have located conceptions of the instantaneous in a realm that has currency in many different places historically and theoretically. Sant’Ellia, Marinetti, Boccioni and the Futurists applied their understanding of speed, as an instance of the instant, into a formally manipulative architectural device. Their integration of the literal speed of infrastructure and transportation was merged with their immaterial notion of the aesthetic of speed. In another approach, Le Corbusier’s Villa Contemporaine project for the center of Paris, dealt with speed in organizational and rational way, associating the mechanical production and modernization of the early 20^th century, with ways to deal with urban problems in a brisk and swift way, in terms of time. The interesting problem of permanence also plays into the development of the instantaneous specifically through perceiving of an architecture that changes as much as a society does in a lifetime, something definitely theorized by both the Futurists and Le Corbusier. Incorporating the instantaneous as a device to inform aspects of architecture have affected not only the way we perceive space, but build and construct it too, making it an integral part of contemporary design.

 The Futurists were married to speed, and there was no way this would not affect their conception of space. Even the origin of the word futurism, which is rooted in the implementation of the future, deals explicitly with achieving the near Future in an expedient way. Their dual projection of both speedy-in-character and quick-to-build, defined their architecture as not only instantly attainable (in comparison with traditional building techniques of the time), but also effectually instantaneous. The aesthetics and programming of futurism, in their exaltation of infrastructure and transportation, merged a singular vision of what a society and its architecture should look, sound, feel, and act like. This cohesive projection allowed for the instantaneous to be read easily through the projects themselves, affording a citizen the visual tools to deal with the speed of daily life.

In another instance, Le Corbusier’s Vers un Architecture and his Voisin Plan for Paris, written and designed after the Futurist manifesto and Citta Nouva projects, challenged the architectural status quo through exposing faults in the expression of a contemporary architecture. In Vers une Architecture, chapters entitled Eyes which do not See: Automobiles and Architecture or Revolution, Le Corbusier proposes a vision for the modern home as a machine for living, as well as a call to have a relevant architecture for a contemporary society. In both cases, there is a direct relationship with the instant, specifically through rational understanding of modernization. In his book The City of Tomorrow, there is a rational organization of the city in a controllable gridded plan. In regards to dealing with the urban population of a city, Le Corbusier states that, ‘this great density (of architecture) gives us our necessary shortening of distances and ensures rapid intercommunication’, which helps locate rational planning and organization having and ends of expediency and facilitating speed, as in mechanical production, into our daily life through architecture. [iii

The other consideration regarding these projections of the instantaneous deal with how each producer dealt with permanence. Kenneth Frampton, in Modern Architecture: A Critical History exposes a possible contradiction in the way Sant’Elia describes the Citta Nouva and his anti-permanent notion of a dynamic architecture by stating, “where the Messagio took a stand against all commemorative architecture, in consequence, against all static and pyramidal forms, Sant’Elia’s drawings are replete with such monumental images”.[iv] The inherent monumentality to these structures called for a separate discourse on objects and their significances, but instead relied solely on their design to convey the points of Futurism. Le Corbusier, on the other hand, went a step further in material production and prescribed easily constructible models for modern housing through an appreciation for automobiles, steamliners, and airplanes. Both notions of how the instant can play into the overall character of an architecture, were dealt with differently by the Futurists and Le Corbusier.    

Since the presence of the instantaneous has pervaded theories on architecture, it is integral to identify modes of its manifestation: the effect and the implementation of the instant. The former notions deals with the immaterial relationship one has with their environment and the latter deals directly with the physical characteristics that define that environment.

The effectual device of the instantaneous is related to the realm of the phenomenological, which is to say ‘how’ we experience the speed of the instant, such as the velocity of the Futurist Citta Nouva being an integral aesthetic to their built environment. Inserting society into an active relationship with speed is the realization of high-speed transit in Futurism. At once being able to be sucked in below or above ground and herded by the hundreds to locations around a region phenomenally associates daily existence with speed of the Citta Nouva. In City of Tomorrow, Le Corbusier’s rational organization of Paris into the Voisin plan, which can house millions of people, relies on the ‘machine aesthetic’ of mechanical reproduction to inform the physicality of the city. The aesthetic make-up of these cities informs the perception of a citizen’s existence through streamlined buildings looking nothing like the cities of old and being infinitely cleanlier. The experience of such a city is as important as the speed, performance and choreography of its communication, transit and sewage systems.

The physical characteristics that make up the built environment are not only the final realizations of the building schemes themselves, but also their constructability and relationship to the technological advancements of society at that time; Le Corbusier’s obsession not only with a ‘machine aesthetic’ for architecture, but also an architecture made up of parts that could be reproduced easily and swiftly are examples of this. Conceiving of the Domino principle is but one example of an embedded notion of instantaneous rational reproducibility. In Vers une Architecture, the chapter entitled Mass-Production Houses deals directly with pointing out the downfalls of traditional means of constructing architecture citing ‘more than two years to construct a building that can be constructed in less than six months today’, solely because of modernization.[v]

‘A city that has speed has success’, states Le Corbusier, and while it may be interpreted in various ways, the instantaneous is still the actualizing force behind attaining it.[vi] Without the possibility of having these cities constructed in an acceptable timeframe, one that is related to the full force behind its inception is essential. Having a cohesive packaging of an immaterial presence of the instant, as well as being able to produce it instantaneously, is what defines this notion as realizable on all scales associated with it. Without one, there is no complete vision of an instant city or an instant condition for architecture.

^[i] Kenneth Frampton, Modern Architecture: A Critical History (London: Thames and Hudson, 1985), 84-89.

^[ii] Le Corbusier, The City of Tomorrow (Paris:, 1929), 10

^[iii] Le Corbusier, p.16

[iv] Frampton. p. 88.

[v] Le Corbusier, Vers une Architecture (New York: BN Publishing, 2008) 232

[vi] William J.R. Curtis, Le Corbusier: Ideas and Forms (New York: Rizzoli, 1986), 60-64.

To travel, as an architect, can mean many different things. To use your travel as a critical method, can be eye opening, as we have seen with several texts about the extended stays in alien lands and even alien readings of native contexts. The difference with each lies not only in the ends or ideologies they serve, but in the methods they choose, to create the catalyst for their criticism.

Let’s assume a way in which a general public becomes associated with a place is through news, media, books, and films regarding it. How then can these quotidian catalysts for observation and criticism be used for something other than making comparisons to the reality of a place? The point lies in the jump off or frame of reference, but does not end there. The three films or references I am using are the popular, Risky Business(1983), Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986), and Candyman (1993). Each paints a different, but indelibly reflective, picture of Chicago. The movies themselves serve only as placeholders and their message could be of even less importance, yet the scenes that portray the city speak about very real things that can be criticized.

Joel Goodsen and his risqué train ride

Picture it, Chicago, 1983. Now don’t. An undersexed senior in high school has just taken a beautiful young escort for a girlfriend. The nuances of the movie are not of importance, except for a very risqué train ride around downtown Chicago at night. As they enter the train, it is late and there are a still few pesky riders between them and an ultimate act of consummation. There is unease on Joel’s part as the train sheds its riders…because all he wants to do is have sex with his girlfriend, without anyone around.

The picture painted in this scene deals with a very real issue of privacy and publicity in public transit. As I ride the train every morning, day, and evening, I encounter amplified moments of reality, sometimes becoming surreal. Maybe not as surreal as having an intimate moment with my girlfriend, with the backdrop of the Chicago Skyline around the Loop sliding past me a la Smithson’s Passaic Journey, but nevertheless intense. The public stage of the train has to be negotiated through our private actions taking place there. Whether it’s a phone call or conversation with a fellow rider, as well as a heated argument with someone whose shoe you stepped on or standing up because of the musty smell of a wino sitting near you, there are decisions made that strike me as part of a social contract imbedded in us as children during our indoctrination in a form of ethical reasoning. Nevertheless, the train and the actions that take place on its stage have the backdrop of history and architecture, commercial advertising, and endless ads to go to a tech school join the army, become a Chicago Police officer, and “If you see something, say something” ; the speed of this communication or dialogue has been amplified to the point of hyper-reality. Life is not merely a real reality playing out alongside others anymore, but also becomes a scene, an image, and a virtual condition, in which we engage in daily on the L.

My dialogue with privacy and publicity in public transit has created a moment where reality is indistinguishable from adjacent virtual projections by each rider, for the length of the ride, and whatever I do feels like a surreal choice that has consequences outside of my own personal being. The phenomenon of riding the train is still a novel one, which can stay novel simply due to the changing scene of everyday life.

Ferris Bueller’s day up the Sears tower and out of the suburbia

Erections seem to be a good segue to speak about Ferris Bueller’s trip up the Sears Tower. Ferris Bueller follows Joel Goodsen’s lead when he borrows his friend Cameron’s dad’s car for a day of downtown Chicago exploring. Cameron, Sloane Peterson, Ferris’ girlfriend, and Ferris have an unadulterated playpen in downtown, where the sky is quite literally the limit. The scene culminates in a weightless, almost removed moment, when they get on the railings of edge on the viewing platform in the tower and bend over to look down and out. What is viewed is the endless suburban expanse versus the height of its own structure–in a way, the physical ends of technological, economic drives and forces.

Chicago’s Eastern downtown center provides itself with several adjacent supplementary districts to allow for its metropolis to thrive. The expansion North, South, West, and Up is but a fallout of locating the city center on the eastern edge of its limits. Chicago is a city of neighborhoods and suburbs, each with their own identity, but with downtown, and in turn the Sears Tower, as reminder of place, over a quarter of a mile in the sky. Since it is the tallest building in Chicago it becomes its own literal and cultural referent, as well as reflects, not only the city around it, but itself through its erection into the sky. In this way, the idea of inhabiting the upper floors and viewing your life back through the lens of separation it offers creates a mirror-like condition. Being able to see the dead end or continual expansion of suburban life can strike a few nerves: there is a big issue with the cultural perpetuation of suburbia as an answer to the American dream, and since there are limits, both ecologically and economically, to the outward expansion, what is our position in this perpetuation?

As an erected mirror, allowing a schism from the ground, and in turn an ungrounded or de-stable condition for the viewer, the action of the Sears Tower as almost a literal reality check can humble most of us, but when we can ask it a question and get an answer, well that creates a whole new sets of questions regarding our involvement in suburbia, least obvious of all being “Why am I talking to a building”?

Candyman’s Cabrini

The building and the mirror relate nicely to the lore of the Candyman, who is summoned by chanting his name in the mirror and lives in the Cabrini Green housing projects, near the north side of Chicago. The inhabitance by the Candyman of the gang-ridden housing projects of Cabrini exemplifies the notion that for folklore (the legend that keeps Candyman alive) to continue, it must be perpetuated on a day-to-day basis. Truth of the matter is not essential, as is the rehearsal and rehasing of that oral tradition. With that said, the darkest corners of Cabrini, the forgotten spaces, the trash heaps, are all Candyman’s territory. A virtual no mans land creates the scenario of the haunting and in this forgotten, almost interstitial, space is where the lore is situated.

The fact that Cabrini Green shows the United States failure using the free standing housing block to house its citizen is an argument we all know too well. Therefore, the idea that these buildings could be destroyed and systematically & institutionally forgotten seems to me a greater crime than the gentrification used to ‘clean’ the area up.

The haunting of a building has always intrigued me, due to its ability to terrify. In a odd way, we make connections that are almost physical with these spaces. Not just physical in a reciprocal or phenomenological sort of way, but literally by the building extending and affecting us. The effect is not the simple noun of the building anymore, characterized by anyone word or concept chosen by the architect; where as the affect, crosses this mirror condition of simply being confronted by the image of yourself or your surrounding and penetrates a much deeper and less superficial surface of ourselves. We activate the space with an attack mechanism and allow it to aura-tically affect us. Hence we rehash this assault through our simple awareness or thinking of the haunting or verb of our spaces.

* * * *

Without a frame of reference, there is no way to create your element. These references whether provocative, cheesy, or terrifying, allow us distance and/or proximity to our certain reality that we encounter in our travels. They also represent the image we project onto our environments, whether local or foreign, and can be surprising with their responses. Sometimes in asking the questions we have already speculated the response we want, where as the unexpected forces us out of our element, yet again.

After reading Anthony Vidler’s “Histories of the Immediate Present: Inventing Architectural Modernism”, I unabashedly thought that this book was not a vein attempt to curate four historian’s accounts of modernism for the purpose of self-definition or inclusion into a prestigious lineage (although that does occur implicitly), but rather a mixtape, a collection of discursively set tracks or influences that do not necessarily imply direction from or lineage to predecessors. [1] The mixtape has been said to be the most widely practiced American art form. ^[2] Indeed, Vidler’s project is situated in a completely different paradigmatic realm within architectural discourse – posthistoire, which is to say post-historical or the ‘end’ of history ­– than his subjects. This curation becomes a work of art in itself, in that it allows Vidler to present a piece of a history without the ‘force’ or ‘direction’ of it becoming a rudimentary measure of its qualitative success. Vidler’s mixtape allows the reader a much more personal look into the mind of the author because there is never a non-autobiographical voice within literature or ‘history’. In this formation of historians, I believe, lies the counter to thesis of posthistoire: anti-history.

Through his accounts of each invented modernism and it’s author’s respective history, there is an alternate picture painted by Vidler (and my listening to his mixtape) which have certain implications on his project of post-history. I’ll expose this through the structure of mixtapes, which could define the project of anti-history, implicit in this text.

Through each track or chapter, Vidler traces an interesting construction of modernism through the written histories by Emil Kaufman, Colin Rowe, Reyner Banham, and Manfredo Tafuri. Each writer attempts to set a stage for modernism through linking sometimes disparate and distant historical figures, events, or time periods, for a specific purpose or endorsement: Kaufman’s Le Corbusier link to Ledoux’s project in architecture, Rowe’s formalist connection between Palladio and Le Corbusier, Banham’s notion of technological determinism tying in an unfolding modernity throughout architecture, as well as Tafuri relating the project of modernity to the project of humanism during the Renaissance. These narrative retellings show their specific author’s interest in influencing and defining an active historical development sometimes spanning several centuries and styles, to frame a mode of the then current architectural modernism. In short, they reach and cultivate new modes through new readings and misreadings of accepted ‘history’. These readings are the songs, in that they act alone, are both part of an autonomous project outside of the mixtape and coupled together for certain new collective affects.

Through song order or chapter structure, there is a practical lineation for reading this book, but also the possibility of disregard for this structure. This could be understood through the mixtape’s ability to shuffle songs around. There really is no difference in reading the introduction and first four chapters, in order of appearance (Kaufman, Rowe, Banham, and Tafuri) or in a shuffle, as long as Chapter 5: Postmodern or Posthistoire, is last. The last chapter ties in the project of posthistoire and unfinished modernity, into the work of the aforementioned authors. If this were to be read first, the reader could see the post-rationalized thesis unfold clearly in the narrative, which of course provides a different experience to the same set of tracks. This can imply that the order of the songs is not as important as the selection of the tracks themselves. The power of each track and its apparent disorder, questions the ‘neutral’ or ‘objective’ discipline of history at its core, begging the question, ‘is narrative more important than ‘facts”?

We can see here that narrative trumps ‘facts’ because of its immediate ability to interest someone and that finding your own way through the textual mixtape defines infinite narrative paths, chosen by the reader (listener). This is pretty damn empowering to the person reading, since there is even pressure distribution between author and reader to construct that path.

Through the title or what the author names/themes their mixtape, there is another important aspect of creation. The title Histories of the Immediate Present: Inventing Architectural Modernism can be broken down into it’s part, which, notwithstanding, can exist on their own and paint different pictures of and for Vidler. First off, the immediate present is a play on Banham’s interest in the immediate future, which is noted, but does more to place Vidler into the context he wishes to be perceived in versus undermining Banham’s project. This may be because he obviously loves Banham, but is probably done mostly to contextualize his project. Inventing Architectural Modernism is a little bit harder to unpack. There are no explicit judgments made by Vidler in regards to the quality of each invention by the authors, yet the defining moments allow appropriation to occur, in a Derridian sense. What we CAN take from the sub-title is the theme that Vidler is imbuing into the authors based on the project he is a part of: inventing architectural narratives that convince rather than justify. Hence the title is but a sub-text at play within the narrative, constantly active and framing a position, since it is the first thing you encounter with a mixtape (or book).  

Through the intro track, Eisenman argues that by bracketing history, Vidler was able to construct the disciplinary project he was trying to convey. By bracketing ‘deconstruction’, I argue that bracketing of history was still contingent upon the dichotomy between objective and subjective/fictive history and falls a bit short of it’s aims to challenge ‘history’. [3] Vidler’s posthistoire serves a specific purpose to create the ‘texture’ of this book, but does not obliterate the project of ‘history’ (as an objective discipline). [4] If anything it reinforces the inventions by retelling them as a justification to invent.

Through the outro, Vidler marries these authors through the proposition of an open-ended or ‘unfinished modernity’ meant for the future readers and architects to complete. “It is equally clear that ‘modernity’ is a continuing project of reevaluation and innovation, based on experiment and internal investigation”. [5] Thus, track selection is essential here because without it, the themes or possible directions of these investigations cannot be exposed. Not surprisingly, Vidler ‘methodically’ chose these from already written and published essays, reinforcing the initial character of each one separate from the other in volume or compilation, hence why this is a mixtape.

Thus, the mixtape can allow for an alternate reality (what we make of it) made up of parts already existing within a framework tied into a ‘certain’ reality. This project would not be tied into the project of ­posthistoire and be close to an anti-history, or non-fiction. The varying degree of historical accuracy (whatever that means) does allow for substantiation on a certain level, but the power of the book comes from the construction of a narrative by author or reader.

[1] The original structural make-up of the mixtape has been transcended now by the advent of technology (analog tape medium to digital medium). I use mixtape interchangeably instead of the more current term ‘playlist’ (i.e. a ‘mixtape’ that can be shuffled around to create alternate versions or configurations of the initial one). Hence, there is not difference between shuffling and mixtaping today because of the inability to separate the terms.

[2] Geoffrey O’Brian (essayist, book and film critic, and poet; editor-in-chief of Library of America publishing house).  

[3] Peter Eisenman’s introduction to ‘Histories of the Immediate Present: Inventing Architectural Modernism‘

[4] Jacques Lacan’s usage of texture, in a psychoanalytic sense.

[5] Anthony Vidler, Histories of the Immediate Present: Inventing Architectural Modernism, p. 198

“Architecture is often experienced inattentively or with the greatest prejudice of will and mood – exactly opposite to the way one is supposed to experience a symphony or work of art. One implication of this for architecture is that, among other things, the architect must over-code his buildings, using a redundancy of popular signs and metaphors, if his work is to communicate as intended and survive the transformation of fast changing codes”.

- Charles Jencks, ‘The language of Post-modern Architecture’, p.70

To say Charles Jencks’ The Language of Post-Modern Architecture’ is an over-coding of definitions and descriptions of several contributing factors that led to a ‘post-modern’ architecture, would be understating the scope, survey, and impact of this book. For instance, his four chapters give the reader a fairly unfolding historical development of ‘post-modern’ architecture that would no doubt satiate the academic or scientific architectural historian’s need for origins begetting one style begetting another one. In another breath, almost paradoxically, he develops an equally, if not more, important narrative through captions, which follows a much more anti-dialectical and genealogical network of influences. Given both narratives of essay and caption, and their ability to allow the reader to find their own way through the text(s), this multivalent ‘over-coding’ is the reason this work can still communicate to architects today.

The juxtaposition of narratives is necessary in placing Jencks into the movement he defines. I will attempt to layout a description of both of these narratives; essay and captions–to further enhance the differences between them , but also to conjoin them in the meta-narrative of post modernism (not the architectural style but the intellectual framework). The neutral bedrock for this analysis is his choice of photographs, which are both read through the essays and the captions simultaneously, used to substantiate his position. Structurally, this attaches both texts to a multi-layered tome (this book).

Essays–‘There’s something about modernism’: Death, Modes & Codes

“The result (of modernism)? Ersatz culture, a caricature of the past and future at once, a surreal fantasy dreamed up neither by the avant-garde, nor the traditionalists, and abhorrent to both of them.”

- Charles Jencks, p.37

In Jencks’ body of essays that make up this book, he develops a fairly clear and consistent (or at least intended to be) development of post-modern architecture. Through his introduction and three main chapters, he traces the development through the death of modernism (which has a date!), then through the linguistic nature of architecture’s metaphors, icons/symbols, syntax, and semantics. This culminates in an analysis of currents within the post-modern architectural spectrum (which he tries to define by stylistic influence and confluence, as well as similarity and dissimilarity, in his ‘Evolutionary tree’ p.80). This ends up becoming an impossibly reducible network of architects and styles, yet Jencks takes up the task.

This incessant need to categorize and define architectural styles is reminiscent of early 20th Century books by H.R. Hitchcock or Nikoulas Pevsner. The writing itself is at points ‘off the cuff’ and informal, even cliché, which is a good segue into the quotidian coding he is prescribing. The contention that I have to it is more due to his views on why post-modern architecture developed the way it did and what architect’s ‘need’ to do, if they decide to involve themselves into the post-modern movement. Prescriptions like, “if our complex urban environments are to speak coherently, an explicit method MUST be used”, served more to undermine the complex nature of a post-modern theory and its concurrent social condition; and it essentially created a ‘historically post-modern’ style, through a reading of this text as a ‘guide’ (Jencks, p.77). Both the categorization, which is an accepted modern empirical practice, as well as the prescriptive tone of certain parts of his chapters, expose Jencks’ training through modernism and his adoption of several accepted methodologies that made their way past it’s ‘death’ (in chapter one). This seems to undermine his position, but maybe not as much as the scope of his intended post-modern project.

“Consistency equals unconscious hypocrisy, (or, occasionally, conscious elitism) (Jencks, p.79)”. Aren’t his accounts consistent and hypocritical? Or are they just elite? Because he speaks a good deal about the ‘layman’ that architectural codes must be understood for, yet he develops a fairly esoteric collection of terms and concepts within his book that would no doubt ‘confuse’ the ‘layman’. It was written for architects dabbling, fighting, and embracing post-modernism. Plain and simple!

Captions–Projective Criticism: The ‘fast-changing code’ of the caption

In an opposing, yet complementary, fashion, Jencks’ captions really capture the ‘inconsistency’ that apparently was lacking throughout the essay portion of this book. The captions, which are accompanied by an image, which refers back to the essay as well, are developed along a much more free flowing network. This genealogy that Jencks exposes is much more successful in allowing for a rich and open trans-historical dialogue between the buildings, to develop. The autobiographical ’I’ is present within these captions and effectively give the reader a separate story of the influence on and criticism of, post-modern architecture.

There is a polemical tone injected with his witty remarks in the captions, even reminiscent of Reyner Banham. There is an honesty found within them that surpasses the effect of the categorizations, definitions, and, sometimes, esoteric ideas found in the essays. The connections between the buildings in the pictures are sometimes direct and sometimes a bit of a reach, but Jencks gives reasons as to why this image is put forth, as well as a fairly spot on criticism of an aspect of the architecture. The detail and attention to the caption is impressive, and the amount of text generated is substantial, leaving it as large chunk of writing, within a larger chunk of writing.

The caption is the area he projects himself the most. The reader knows that this is unadulterated Jencks speaking, with all of his internalized expertise in architecture and theory. He can marry the high-formalist critique of style with an understanding of a local code, and express it succinctly, without a quotation. In an informal tone, he states:

“Caption 190: View across the main Piazza showing builders contribution to design. The rocks grow up from the ground into brick and then tile. Participation and individualism have produced a witty environment, which only lacks normality. One longs for a bit of straight modernism here or even Aldo Rossi (Jencks, p.106)”.

Jecnks has projected his taste, his understanding of cultural significances and codes, and his choice for what style he thinks suits best or even who should have designed it. It moves swiftly from a quotidian understanding, to one of a connoisseur, to a formalist, and then to an appreciation, regardless of if he ‘likes’ the outcome or not. This appreciation of architecture, regardless of if it is much more complex that it seems to be or that there is a simplicity that recalls meaning outside of a form, is what characterizes Jencks’ work. Sure, it is conjecture, but it is better than mundane academic clichés.

The book as a descriptive mish-mash of influence and confluence on the then current architecture culture succeeds, but as a prescriptive methodology falls utterly short (as it should have). As far as universal scope, Post-Modern (or after modernist) architecture is defined by Jencks as an emergent anti-monolith. It was meant to directly oppose the univalent or monolithic juggernaut that was Modernism’s International Style in the 1950s and 60s. But his work is still reminiscent of the incessant need for modernists to define and categorize everything into neat little ‘boxes’ (pun intended), maybe not for the sake autonomy, but definitely for some form of ambiguity. Now that ambiguity may be the triumph of this book, since post-modernism didn’t try to produce answers, as much as it created questions. 

“Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery - celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from - it’s where you take them to.”

— Jim Jarmusch, The Golden Rules of Filming

 “…this never happened. It will shock you how much this never happened”.

 — Don Draper, (as portrayed by Jon Hamm on the AMC show ‘Mad Men’)

Sometimes, amongst the fodder that is contemporary American television programming, there are shows, which are not only smart and entertaining, but also revealing. They let us into a moment, if only for a few seconds, where we can see what is being said and done, but also what is not; what is usually seen and the background that’s forgotten. We can feel the tension or agony of a person, as well as their reliefs; we can see their happiness or their hypocrisy. This places the viewer into the situation (if they decide to take this position), which is active and played out in the current. This is also true of shows that portray a past or future era and allows for the viewer to have a ‘cushion’ of historical distance from the event being portrayed. The success of those shows that portray the past relies on the ability of the viewer to access some form of information, previously unknown or unheard of, which can justify or change a perspective, notion, or belief.

 ‘Mad Men’ does just that. And who would want to watch another ‘Bewitched’ anyways; Don Draper is not Darren Stevens.

What more can we gain from a revisiting of history, through the biased lens of a camera already tainted with the archetypal TV shows on ‘Ad Men’? The answer is not simple, but at the very least we are given a glimpse that might be able to help us see past the façade of the modern era in the 1960s and through a lens of reality that all precursors seemed to have ‘missed’ (or even, mistaken). That coupled with the sexualization of society in the sixties, as well as the sleek modern aesthetic of fitted suits, skinny ties and Barcelona chairs, and you have the inklings of a pretty damn good TV show.

Aside from the obvious reasons and clichés why this show is successful, there is a unifying element that is active pretty much throughout the entirety of its seasons: it is gritty, messy, and complex. It’s just the way the American audience likes it. Or is it?

While offering viewers the archetypes of ad men television past, which include the overbearing boss, the stud designer, the aspiring intern, supportive/alienated wives, as well an endless supply of ‘love’ interests, they also offer the viewer a fairly complex set of relationships between the aforementioned figures. These relationships between each character and everyone they encounter, work in a dual fashion: they play out along a narrative of the hustle and bustle of a 1960s high modern advertising agency; and against a narrative of contradiction to the way of life associated with them and it. Essentially, you have an active narrative (history) and a supplemental narrative (contradictions to that history) that occur at the same time. As a scene is coming together, the viewer is left to see the scene for what it is and what it means.

This narrative structure is achieved through the complex dialogue that occurs every show. Dialogue, in this sense, means both what is being said and what is meant. This dialogue occurs constantly through a myriad of binaries and beyond, such as pinning polar political opposites against each other, creating love interests of independent ‘liberated women’ for Don (who he uses and objectifies), as well showing the confrontations with these illusions and facades of each characters life. What the second narrative is fulfilling is the ‘telling of it straight’, in regards to the 1960s. There is no bullshit. Life was just as gritty and even dirtier because you actively chose to live in a closet, for the most part. 

In a lot of ways, the writers of this show have not only reclaimed the highly disputed cultural territory of the sixties, but have done so by exposing it for all of it’s shortcomings. The notion that ‘America was a better place’ is one held and reserved by aging baby boomers and senior citizens, and yet this reading of ‘their’ time and ‘their’ social problems, compel them and us, to watch week after week. Can the affordance of this re-reading, as well as the highly critical writing, from Mad Men’s authors, force even the staunchest of those believers to question if the social constructions of the era did more to erode authentic identities of individuals for the sake of an idealized standard that, evidently, did not exist past an illusory state?

The answer to that can’t be posited directly, but is investigated usually, in the show, through quotations such as, “…this never happened. It will shock you how much this never happened”. Although out of context, Don Draper, in a few words, basically allows the viewer into his own messy world where the double-lives, the affairs, in essence, the hidden reality behind the façade, is shattered by moments of self-realization and reconstructed/reinforced by the fact that way of life was standard and socially acceptable. The crux of this view, of a person’s internal struggle and constant movement from ‘closeted’ to ‘outed’, from ‘farce to ‘truth’, frames a view on the complexity of life during the 1960s.

Mad Men is successful because of the authenticity achieved through the language of the modern era. The subversion of this language through nuanced satire and exposition of the actuality behind it is amongst the methods that contribute to the shows effectiveness as a cultural criticism. Jim Jarmusch, quoting Jean-Luc Goddard, is very applicable in this case. This show is ‘taken’ to a new level because of this reposting of history. The authors of Mad Men have used origins to expose truth. They have allowed the viewer a chance to access some form of information that was previously not spoken about, as endemic of a generation. Ultimately, they have uncovered everyone’s ‘dirty secrets’ and they like it (and apparently liked it).

I have read this quote from Kahn time and time again, yet I still have never been able to take it seriously. This is mostly due to the attribution of “truth” to a specific definition. It now dawns on me that that statement is loaded with much more than the classical definition of truth. Kahn’s definition of architecture, in this sense, is about as valid as any other definition, but not because it responds to a specific era or philosophy of architecture. Architecture is the creation of space, the construction of reality. In it, we are creating our lives; in it, we are constructing our reality; in it, we can find “truth” because of that reality.

The notion of relative truth, thanks to post-enlightenment thinking, has afforded our society a bit of “personal distance” from the ones that preceded it. We are able to contradict and exist in paradox. There are no ‘big bad wolves’ calling out our double-standards, except for maybe our governments and religious institutions (but who takes them seriously anymore?).

The beauty of this Kahn quote is in it’s prescribing truth versus subscribing to an already existing and accepted one. While some may see a classically flawed definition in this quote, I see a very contemporary and open one.

In the next week, I will load my final thesis presentation and some pages from the final version of the thesis book. This is the springboard.