The Sphere and the Labyrinth The MIT Press = _ Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England Avant-Gardes and Architecture from Piranesi to the 1970s Manfredo Tafuri translated by Pellegrino d’Acierno and Robert ConnollyDESIGN. Rec'd CB ENVI DEC 08 1987 “Teaser Acnontadgnents ye would ie wo expres our pata al shove wh ised with hs ak, Our thanks 0 Marco Riosech wh helped in heal tag a Kavn Barnaby, for er tena Tuts Die Galoscer der Gluck, ro Va esis for be lp anrating the Rasa snd, above all 10 Jaan Ckaan,wbovegidace ad encam ve bee event We ate ‘Specilly grateful vo Aba Kenney fr her rilnce and nuh ned the text, Seoge Btenscn, Piranesi of The Fst of Farms” (ranted by Raker Rede) speared "8 Opposion 1, 8 1978 by The Insta for Ariecare and tan Sts and The MIT Engl ranlaton © 1987 Maschat Insite of Thy ‘Oni published er thee L fee airs: Ananguandi architetan (tani 70-2 1380 by Coie Ena ere an, Al ighs reserva. No ara hs Bok may Be reproduces any fern by any econ oF inchaneal meas ilaingphotaopying, tec, or nfermanon trae an ei ‘thou permission i writing roc he pbs this book was stn Alls an Fauna by DEKR Compra and printed and bound by Haly Lthograph i he United Sate of Ae, Lorry of Congress Cataloging in Fabetion Data “far, Manfred, “The sphere and she by, Traslation of a ers bono ibgraphy Incader mes 1 rchiecre, Modern Hin. 2, Avan lneshetia) Hey, Le Isp 0-262 2006-9Introduction: The Historical "Project” 1 Part One Prelude: "Apocalipsis cum Figuris 1 “The Wicked Architect": G. Piranesi, Heterotopia, and the Voyage 25 2 ‘The Historicty of the Avant- Garde: Piranesi and Eisenstein 55 Appendis: Piranesi, or the Fluidity of Forms by Sergei M. Eisenstein 65 Contents Part Two Part Three The Adventures of the Avant Garde: From the Cabaret to the The Glass Bead Game Metropolis 3 8 The Stage af "Virtual City": From “architecture dans le boudoir” Fuchs te the Totatheaier 95.26? ‘Appendix: The Galshes of Fortune g by Bruno Taut 113 The Ashes of Jerson 291 4 USS.R-Berln, 1922: From Populism to "Constructivist International” ng, 5 Toward the "Socialist City” Notes 305 USSR, 1917-28 149 ‘ Name Index 367 The Now Babylon: The "Yellow Giants” and the Myth of Americanism 171 Appendix: A City under a Single Roof by Raymond M. Hood 190 7 Sorialpolitik and the City in Weimar Germany 197 Appendix: The Socialization of Bruilding Activity by Martin Wagner 234Sl The Sphere and the LabyrinthIntroduction: The Historical “Project” There comes a moment (though not aoays) in research when all the piece bein to fll nto place, us na isa pussle But woke the jie fav ple, where ll the pieces are nee at hand and only one ie can beassmbled (and thus the conrchess af each move be determined inme= diately in veenrch only some ofthe pees are wetlable, and heart cally ore than one fre can Be mae from them. In fac, theres tay the rik of sing, moe or less conscousy the piees of the is $s passe as blocks i construction game For this reason, the fe that tverything fll into places an ambiguous sign: either one is completely right or completely wrong. When soang, we mistake for objective ve cation the selection and solicitation (more or less deliberate) of the e ‘ence, whichis forced 1 confirm the presuppositions (more or les txplc) ofthe research itself. The deg thinks i i iting the bone and i Instead biting its oun ail In this way Carlo Ginzburg and Adriano Prosperi synthesize the laby- rinthine path of historical analysis and the dangers with which it is fraught, in one of the few recent volumes that have had the courage to describe, not the Olympian and definitive results of research, but rather its tortuous and complex iter. But why should we propose, at the beginning of a volume dedicated to the adventures of architectural language, the problem of the “jig-saw puzzles” characteristic of historical research? In the first place, we could answer that our intention isto follow an indirect path. Contrary to those who pose the theme of architectural writing—the term “language” should, it scems ro us, be adopted only as a metaphor— we shall present the theme of critical writing: is i¢ nor the function of riticism to constitute the historical (and thus the ceal) specificity of artistic swriting:? Does not historical work possess a language that, entering per= petually into confiee with the multiple techniques of environmental for-mation, can function like litmus paper to verify the correctness of discourses on architecture? (Only in appearance, then, will we speak of something else. For how ‘often, when probing what is on the fringes of a given problem, do we discover the most useful keys for dealing with the problem itself—particu- larly if i is as equivocal as the one that we are about to examine ‘Let us further define our theme. Architecture, language, techniques, in- stitutions, historical space: are we simply lining up on a wire stretched over a void a series of problems, each with its own intrinsic characteristics, or ean we legitimately contest the "terms” used here to trace these prob- Jems back to an underlying or hidden structure, in which these words can find a common meaning on which to rest? It is no accident that we have reduced to “words” the density of historically stratified disciplines, Every time, in fact, that the ertic’s zeal uses his guilty conscience to erupt ‘constructing linear routes that force architecture fo migrate into language, language into institutions, and institutions into the all-encompassing uni versality of history, one feels the need to ask how such a totaly illegit mate simplification could gain currency. ‘After the persuasive demonstrations of the untranslatability of architec- ture into linguistic terms, after Saussure’s discovery that language itself is “system of differences,” after the calling into question of the conspicu- ‘ous features of institutions, historical space appears to dissolve, to disinte- grate, to become a justification for disordered and elusive multiplicity, a space of domination. Is this not the final outcome reached by a good part of the "Lacanian left” or by an epistemology of pure registration? And afterall, is not architectural writing (this phantasm that we now recognize as divided and multiplied into techniques incommunicable among one an- other) itself an institution, a signifying practice—an ensemble of signify ing practices—a multiplicity of projects of domination? Is it possible to make a history from such “projects” without breaking. away from them, without abandoning the multiple perspectives of history itself, and without inquiring into that which permits the very existence of history? Is it still necessary to remember that the totality of the capitalistic means of production is a condition for both the cohesion and the diffrac- tion of techniques, that the “mystical character of the commodity” breaks up and multiplies the relationships that are at the base of its own, reproduction? ‘A series of questions confronts the historian who discovers the dishomo- sgeneity of the materials of his work. These questions go to the very roots of historiographic work, uniting indissolubly the question of languages, of techniques, of sciences, of architecture, with that of the languages of his- tory. But which history? Toward what productive ends? With what long- term objectives? ‘The questions that we are posing arise from a precise assumption. Hi tory is Viewed as a “production,” in all senses of the term: the production of meanings, beginning with the “signifying traces” of events; an analyti- cal construction that is never definite and always provisional; an insteu- iment of deconstruction of ascertainable realities. As such, history is both determined and determining: itis determined hy its own traditions, by the ‘objects that it analyzes, by the methods that it adopts: it determines its ‘own transformations and those of the reality that it deconstructe. The lan ‘guage of history therefore implies and assumes the languages and the techniques that act and produce the real: it “contaminates” those lan- sguages and those techniques and, in turn, is “contaminated” by them. ‘With the fading away of the dream of knowledge as a means to power, the constant struggle between the analysis and its objects—their irreducible tension—remains. Precisely this tension is "productive": the historical project” is always the "project of a "9 Franco Rella writes: Interpretive knowledge has a conventional character and is a production, 1 positing of a meaning-in-relation and not am uncovering of the mean ing. But what isthe limit of this operat, of this activity? What is the locus of this relationship? What lies behind the Fiktion of the subject, of the thing, of the cause, of the being? What, then, can bear this ‘awful plurality’? The body. ‘The phenomenon of the body is the richest, the ‘most significant [deutlichere], the most tangible phenomenon: to be dis- cussed first [Voranzustellen] methodologically, without coming to any deci: sion about its ultimate meaning.’* This, then, is the limit of interpretation, that is to say the locus of the description. ... In fact, through criticism and the ‘plurality of interpretation’ we have acquired the strength ‘not t0 ‘want to comtest the world’s restless and enigmatic character and im this way genealogy has proved itself to be a critique of values, for it has discovered the material origin of them, the body. ‘Thus emerges the problem of the “construction” of the object-—disci- plines, techniques, analytical instruments, longeterm structures—to be put in crisis, Immediately the historian is confronted with the problem of the “origins” of the cycles and phenomena that are the objects of his study. Bus is it not precisely in the study of long-term phenomena that the theme of the origin seems mythological. However much Weber's "ideal types” of Panofsky’s conceptual structures appear to be instrumental ab- stractions, is it not precisely in them that the fundamental difference be- tween beginning and origin is posed? And why a beginning? Is it not more “productive” to multiply the “beginnings,” recognizing that where everything conspires to make one recognize the transparency of a unitary cycle there lies hidden an interewining of phenomena that demands to be recognized as such? In effect, to link the problem of history with the rediscovery of mythical “origins” presupposes an outcome totaly rooted in nineteenth-century positivism. In posing the problem of an “origin,” we presuppose the dis- covery of a final point of arrival: a destination point that explains every thing, that causes a given “truth,” a primary value, to burst forth from the encounter with its originary ancestor. Against such an infantile desire to “find the murderer,” Michel Foucault has already counterposed a his- tory that can be formulated as genealogy: "Genealogy does not oppose The Hitoricol Project aitself to history as the lofty and profound gaze of the philosopher might ‘compare to the mole-like perspective of the scholar; on the contrary, it rejects the metahistorical deployment of ideal significance and indefinite teleologies. It opposes itself to the search for “origins.""® Not by chence does Foucault base on Nietzsche his “archaeology of knowledge,” which, like Nietzsche's genealogy, is “made up of little, not obvious truths, ar~ rived at by a rigorous method.”” To avoid the chimera of origin, the ge~ nealogist must avoid all notions of linear causality. He thus exposes himself to a risk, provoked by the shocks and accidents, by the weak point fr points of resistance thet history itself presents. There is no constancy in such a genealogy, but above all no "rediscovery" and no “rediscovery of ourselves.” For “knowledge is not made for understanding; itis made for ceuting.”* So, in opposition to wirkliche Historie (real or actual history], then, an analysis capable of reconstructing the event in its most singular and pre- cise character and of restoring to the irruption of an event its disruptive character. But this analysis primarily serves “to smash to bits those ten- doncies that have encouraged the consoling play of recognitions.” Recogni tion, in fact, presupposes what is already known: the unity of history—the subject to be “re-cognized’—is based on the unity of the structures on which it rests, on the unity, as wel, of its single elements. Foucault makes 4quite explicit the consequences of such a cruel “will to knowledge” exempt from consolatory temptations: Even in the greatly expanded form it assumes today the wil to knowledge dloes not achieve a universal truth: man is not given an exsct and serene mastery over nature. On the contrary, it ceaselessly multiplies the vsks, éreates dangers in every area; it breaks down illusory defenses; it ds- solves the unity of the subject: it releases those elements of itself that are slevoted to its subversion and destruction.” This is exactly what Nietzsche had predicted in Aurora: “Knowledge has been transformed in us into a pasion that shrinks at no sacrifice, at bot- tom fears nothing but its own extinction." And in Beyond Good and Eenil, he went on to warn that “it might be a basin characteristic of exis- tence that those who reach absolute knowledge of it face their own annihilation." But i not this limit this moral risk, the same one that language runs when it tries to theorize itself perfectly? Is not the crystalline purty that one claims from history analogous to what Witegenstein regarded as the preconceived idea of the erystalline purity of language? What guarantee do T have that, after breaking up and dissociating strafications that I recog nize as already plural in themselves, I wll nt arive ata dissemination shat is an end in itself? In fat, by instituting differences and dissemina- ions, o Derida does, 1 actually run th rsk of encountering the "anil svion” predicted and fcae by Nietasche. Bur pechape the real danger does not lie even here. The danger that menaces the genealogies of Fou- cault—the genealogies of madness, ofthe clinic, of punishment, of sexu lntrodvction ity—as well as the dsseminations of Derrida, lies inthe reconsecration of the microscopically analyzed fragmente as new units autonomous and sig nificant in themselves. What allows me to pass from a history written in the plural t a questioning ofthat very plurality? Undoubtedly, for both Nietzsche and Freud theoretical language must