THRESHOLDS 40

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JOURNAL OF THE MIT DEPARTMENT OF ARCHITECTURE

Editorial Policy
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of Architecture, is an annual, blind peer-
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Correspondence
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Published by SA+P Press

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Copyright 2012
Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The individual contributions are copyright
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ISSN 1091-711X
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Printed by Puritan Press, Hollis, NH

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
 Thresholds 40

Socio

Edited by Jonathan Crisman

Cambridge, MA
 Contents

5 Editorial: 67 Tuktoyaktuk: Offshore Oil

Socio-indemnity and and a New Arctic Urbanism
Other Motives
Pamela Ritchot
Jonathan Crisman
75 Boundary Line Infrastructure
11 Conjuring Utopias Ghost
Ronald Rael
Reinhold Martin
83 Dissolving the Grey Periphery
21 Le Corbusier, the Brise-Soleil,
Neeraj Bhatia and
and the Socio-climatic Project
Alexander DHooghe
of Modern Architecture,
1929-1963
91 Park as Philanthropy:
Daniel A. Barber Bow-Wows Redevelopment
thresholds 40

at Miyashita Koen
33 
Move Along!
Yoshiharu Tsukamoto
There Is Nothing to See

Rania Ghosn 99 Mussels in Concrete: A Social

Architectural Practice
39 Flows Socio-spatial
Esen Gke zdamar
Formation

Nana Last 105 Participation and/or

Criticality? Thoughts on an
47 Collective Equipments of Architectural Practice for
Power: The Road and the City Urban Change

Simone Brott Kenny Cupers and

Markus Miessen
55 Collective Form:
The Status of Public The Sluipweg and
113 
Architecture the History of Death

Dana Cuff Mark Jarzombek

 Contents

121 Extra Room: 217 Edens, Islands, Rooms

What if we lived in a
Amrita Mahindroo
society where our every
thought was public?
225 The Prince:
Gunnar Green Bjarke Ingelss Social
and Bernhard Conspiracy
Hopfengrtner
Justin Fowler
127 Sculpture Field: From the
233 Beyond Doing Good:
Symbolic to the Tectonic
Civil Disobedience as Design
Dan Handel Pedagogy

Hannah Rose Mendoza

135 On Radiation Burn

Steve Kurtz 237 Aid, Capital, and the

socio
Humanitarian Trap
163 Cairo di sopra in gi:
Joseph M. Watson
Perspective, Photography,
and the Everyday
245 The End of Civilization
Christian A. Hedrick
Daniel Daou
175 Hush
255 Toward a Lake Ontario City
Steven Beckly and
Department of
Jonathan D. Katz
Unusual Certainties
189 NORCs in New York
263 Sociopaths
Interboro Partners
Jimenez Lai
209 Uncommon Ground:
Aether, Body, and Commons

Zissis Kotionis
 Editorial:

Socio-
indemnity
and
Other
Motives
Jonathan Crisman
 Jonathan Crisman

Gone are the days of black
and white and here is the
time of grey. As social
linkages have become wildly
complex, the normative
positions that might
bring them order have
evaporated. What if, for a
moment, the rules were put
on hold? What if you could
stand up for what you
believe in without losing
your cool?
I opened the call for submissions for this
issue of Thresholds by mentioning a certain
set of rules. They are mostly unspoken and
chiefly reside in architectural discourse, but
they also rear their head in other forms of
cultural practice. The rules say that you cannot
really achieve social change through cultural
thresholds 40
terms), as well as an oblique way of talking
about cultural practice achieving social change.
By interrogating what art and architecture
can do, we hope to somehow expand our
power in the world while simultaneously
appearing objective, disinterested, and cool.
If environmental determinism is out, well then
we can at least figure out how far out it went.
And this mode of operating is technically legal
on the terms of postmodernitydespite an
absence of Big Truths, cultural practice is
still seen as capable of making little changes.
So the quest for agency happily proceeds
on decidedly small terms: performance,
covert ops, and opportunism have become
its buzzwords.
But what if, rather than lingering on
agency, we broke the rules and approached
the social head on? The authors in Socio do
so in a variety of ways, none of which are shy,
tacky, or, most importantly, disinterested. If

their motives have moved past a freedom from

media and to even talk about such a silly
social responsibility, they have also moved
thing is tacky, taboo, toxic. A key strand of
beyond agencys subtle discursive claim that
modernism operated with utopian aims and
it operates without personal gain. As we deal
particularly in the architectural realmhas
with the possibility of a socially conscious
been accused of failing spectacularly, ushering
project, we do so with an understanding that
in a new era of postmodernism. What can
societys gain is our gain. My discussion with
form accomplish, anyway? This story, told
Reinhold Martin on the thoughts he lays out
by Charles Jenks and subsequently re-told
in his recent book Utopias Ghost serves as
so many times as to become a Truth, is itself
an apt introduction to this mode of thinking:
ironic considering the supposed evacuation of
it is one that simultaneously embraces the
big truths within postmodern thought. The
social while acknowledging our decidedly
smokescreen of cool inability, however, covers
postmodern state of affairs; it is one, in
a more sinister fact: by denying the ability
Martins words, where the further inside you
to operate on social terms, one is effectively
go the further outside you get.
indemnified from social responsibility at the
Grounding such a possibility in the
onset. And so we happily went, right up until
history of modernism, Daniel A. Barber
the economic crisis of the past few years,
describes the social aspect of Le Corbusiers
when most around the world realized that
climatic project. Situating what has been
something had gone terribly wrong.
thought to be a well-trodden history on
As the age of the icon evaporates, modes
this new basis, Barber demonstrates that
of cultural production have scrambled to re-
there is more still that we might learn from
discover ways to operate on terms other than
modernisms foray into the social, a point
form. Agency is both a conceptual construct
especially pertinent in light of contemporary
through which one can unearth non-formal
environmental concerns. Rania Ghosn, in an
tools (or re-learn how to use form in political
unpacking of Rancires writing on circulation,

6
 Socio-indemnity and Other Motives
argues that the social project of architecture
is bigger than service provider, be it technical
or otherwise. Rather, in Ghosns words, it
disturbs the socialized consensual order of
solidified social categories by opening the
domain of relevant spatial concerns, operating
to reconfigure our very society. Nana Last
expands this conversation on circulation,
providing a heady rumination on the theory
of flow, placing it within historical, political,
and spatial terms. Ultimately, she presents
flow as a tool through which we can mediate
the social and allow architecture and design
to act out on their critical instincts. And
Simone Brott provides continues this
interrogation through new scholarship on
a heretofore little known group of French
thinkers known as Le CERFI. In the minds of
this group led by Felix Guattari, collective
equipments are what offers potential in
modulating social concernsnamely in todays
context, this means infrastructure.
This line of thinking is both prescient
and relevant, and several authors in this issue
rightly ground their foray into the social
within infrastructural terms. Dana Cuff,
writing on collective form, demonstrates
how infrastructure is, in fact, a latter day res
publica and pairs this argument with some
of the ground-breaking work coming out of
her cityLAB group at UCLA. Pamela Ritchot
conjures a future-oriented scenario for the
oil-oriented development in the Arctic,
suggesting a particularly social solution for
the often-overlooked confluence of crises in
the farthest North. Moving southwards,
Ronald Rael deliberates on a decidedly current
issue within the US context: that of border
security. Rather than take a theoretical and
antagonistic approach toward such a contested
problem, Rael jumps into propositions for
a social architecture that embrace the dirty
reality of border security while aiming to
ameliorate some of its most harmful effects.
And Neeraj Bhatia and Alexander DHooghe
provide both a compelling argument for
and design project of a plinthesisan
7
infrastructural object that itself mediates
our fractured public.
Participation is intrinsically linked
to the social, and as such prompts further
interrogation. An interview with
Yoshiharu Tsukamoto of Atelier Bow-Wow
by Casey Goodwin lays out a project
that examines notions of participation in
practice. Esen Gke zdamar, through
examination of a project in Turkey by Arzu
Kuaslan with Antoni Muntadas, presents a
argument favorable to traditional notions of
participation, particularly within contexts that
lack even a basic understanding of this notion.
Kenny Cupers and Markus Miessen, on the
other hand, present a critique of conventional
notions of participation and argue for
a conflictual mode of participation.
Diving further into art criticism,
Mark Jarzombek examines a question that
has haunted humankind since its inception:
how we, as a society, deal with death and the
afterlife. In his study of both the history of
socio
cemeteries within the Dutch context, and a
striking work of art by Hans van Houwelingen
composed of exhumed tombstones, he touches
upon the subject of the citizen, UNESCO
and its theater of the absurd, and, ultimately,
the role of death within contemporary
society. In a similarly uncanny speculative
design project, Gunnar Green and Bernhard
Hopfengrtner ask: What if we lived in a society
where our every thought was public? Through a
projective methodology, they suggest that by
interrogating notions of publicity, we can begin
to reflect with greater clarity on ourselves.
And Dan Handels history of Israeli artist Ezra
Orion reminds us of cultural productions
capacity to reflect on society by placing itself
outside our frame of reference and into environ-
mental, geologic, and even galactic perspectives.
The next four contributors cast the
art tropes of fear, gaze, and sexuality in a
fresh, social light. Steve Kurtz of Critical
Art Ensemble discusses CAEs tactical
performance art piece, Radiation Burn and,
in doing so, provides a means through we can
 Jonathan Crisman
begin to inoculate ourselves from certain
socially constructed untruthssuch as the
common fear of the dirty bomb threat.
Christian Hedrick examines the practice
of photographer Randa Shaath with regard
to protest in conventional verses everyday
terms, as demonstrated in the Egyptian
Revolution of 2011. His reading of Shaaths
work and its unique perspective of di sopra
in gi provides a way to reframe notions such
as the gaze as once again socially relevant.
Finally, photographer Steven Beckly shares
with us his own revisionist history through
a project titled Hush, with an insightful
response by Jonathan D. Katz who operatively
places the series within what could be called
an LGBT socio-historiography.
Initiating a discussion within the realm
of socio-political concerns, Tobias Armborst,
Georgeen Theodore, and Daniel DOca of
Interboro Partners share their project NORCs
thresholds 40
in New York, calling our attention to a typology
that already existsbut could be improved
uponfor aging communities in New York.
Zissis Kotionis provides a fascinating means
through which one can unpack the nature of
Athenian urban life, mathematically joining
the built environment, the social, and what he
terms the deterritorializing aether. Amrita
Mahindroo gives both an alternative history of
the Great Bombay Textile Strike
and a typological study that effectively
critiques neoliberal capital without straying
from architectural discourse. Similarly,
Justin Fowler reads the work of BIG,
incriminating it with Palin-esque
methodologies which, in the end, also offers a
remarkable means of dealing with social issues
on the terms given by cultural production.
Finally, Hannah Rose Mendoza provides an
unwavering call to arms for those involved
with design pedagogy to take issue with social
concerns while Joseph M. Watson tempers
many of these vigorous arguments with a
meta-critique on certain fallacies within what
aims to be humanitarian cultural practice.
8
As one of three closing reflections,
Daniel Daou places a timeline of what
could be called limits theory in the direct
path of sustainability, that straw man which
has recently played such a prominent
role in architecture and other modes of
cultural production. Through asking what,
precisely, humankinds ends are, he provides
a background to the sustainability debate
which must be dealt with before all else.
Brendan Cormier and Christopher Pandolfi
of Department of Unusual Certainties provide
a hallucinatory look into what a new kind
of socio-regional urbanism might be within
the Great Lakes area, projecting into the
future what seems like an uncomfortably
plausible reality. And finally, as an apt closing,
Jimenez Lai takes issue with the nature of
this issue through Sociopaths, an architectural
rumination, that begins to question our
own perceptions of reality in relation to our
fundamental capacity to do good.
In the end, Socio is much like Ezra
Orions use of holons: it is a reflection of
society, a collective made up of individual
pursuits. All of the contributors contained
within this volume are artists in their own
right, transforming messy realities of the
social into poetics of their various media,
be they scholarship, forms of art practice, or
infrastructural propositions. In a moment
where reality has become immaterial and
where the horizon is all but grey, Thresholds
aims to publish the work of contributors who
perform this creative balancing act without
equivocationindeed, the work of those who
dare to find a path through the socio-.
Images are from Sculpture Field, 1968. Copyright Ezra Orion.
***
Jonathan Crisman is editor for Thresholds, Journal of the
MIT Department of Architecture, and has written for the Los
Angeles Review of Books and PLAT Journal of the Rice School of
Architecture. He has a background in architecture, geography,
and urban planning from UCLA and MIT, and is executive
director for 58-12 Design Lab, a Los Angeles-based non-profit
organization.
Conjuring
Utopias
Ghost

Reinhold Martin
interviewed by Jonathan Crisman
 Reinhold Martin
thresholds 40

Book cover copyright Duke University Press.

12
Conjuring Utopias Ghost

socio

Book cover copyright Rizzoli.

13
 Reinhold Martin
Jonathan Crisman
Your book Utopias Ghost1 builds on and,
in some sense, attempts to supersede and re-
synthesize much of what might be considered
canonical scholarship on postmodernism
within architectureIm thinking of Jameson,
Jencks, and so forth. Does this re-working
of existing scholarshipwhat some might
perceive as a subtle attackcome out of
a perceived need for a newly performative
understanding of postmodernism, the desire
to construct a contemporary project in
a disciplinary landscape of post-criticality,
or something else entirely?2
Reinhold Martin
Well, I would say that the books
approach is fairly straightforward. It had
always seemed to me that there was a
distinction to be made between theories of
cultural postmodernism and the architectural
discourse gathered together under the
same name. So first, we must differentiate
thresholds 40
emphatically between Jameson and Jencks.
It is unfortunate that Jameson and others
had to rely on Jencks as a source for
postmodernist theory in architecture,
though Jencks particularly suits Jamesons
symptomal reading. The resulting character-
ization of architectural works and writings
from the 1970s and 1980s as clear-cut
symptoms of postmodern dissolution
remains quite revealing; nevertheless,
it is somewhat premature.3
1 Reinhold Martin, Utopias Ghost: Architecture and
Postmodernism, Again (St. Paul, MN: University of
Minnesota Press, 2010).
2 This exchange between Reinhold Martin and Jonathan
Crisman occurred via email over a period from January 25,
2011 to May 26, 2011 predating a variety of current events
that could relate to notions of conjuring Utopias ghost,
not the least of which is the Occupy Wall Street movement.
3 Postmodernism as a question has recently surfaced in other
milieus as well. See Charles Jencks et al., eds., Radical
Post-Modernism, special issue, AD 81, no. 5 (Sept 2011);
Institute of Classical Architecture & Art, Reconsidering
Postmodernism, conference proceedings, November 11-
12, 2011; and Glenn Adamson et al., eds., Postmodernism:
Style and Subversion 1970-1990, London: Victoria & Albert
Museum, 2011, exhibition catalog.
14
Historically, this has to do in part with the
troubled afterlife of architectural modernism
within many so-called postmodernist works.
This is one of several intended meanings of
the books title. Without belaboring the point,
my overall argument implies that architecture
has only belatedly become postmodern.
Only today, when it is widely assumed that
the affectations of that period have been
left behind in favor of a more future-oriented
perspective, can we say that architecture
has acquired a full complement of properly
postmodern characteristics. Especially in the
sense that todays various modernist revivals
have finally succeeded in exorcising Utopias
ghostalmost. That is partly what I mean by
insisting that postmodernism is not a style
but a discursive formation: a way of speaking
about the world and a way of acting in it that
makes certain statements possible while
excluding others by making them, in effect,
unthinkable. Among the latter is Utopia not in
the sense of an ideal world, but in the sense of
systemic change.
The books project is therefore trans-
disciplinary. It is not merely about architecture
and its endgames, or even ways out of those
endgames. Instead, I argue that disciplinary
knowledge, and the internal debates that
structure this knowledge, offers a productive
entry point into much more broadly defined
problems. So the book offers an architectural
theory that is also a form of theory qua
theorythat is, a type of discourse that moves
across the humanities and social sciences
while retaining its particular referent, hence
recognizing (indeed, requiring) the specificity
of individual disciplines.
JC
So the idea of learning to live with
Utopias ghostallowing the specter of
systemic change to live among usis one
you argue would be beneficial for not only
architecture, but cultural practice in general
and, perhaps, even society at large? If this is
so, one such diviner might be the Yes Men
and their art practice of large-scale pranks
that imagine a different worldsay, one in
which Dow would repair the damage done by
Union Carbide in Bhopal,4 a topic also covered
 Conjuring Utopias Ghost
in Utopias Ghost regarding the subject of
postmodern architecture. Are there other such
successful diviners that come to mind?
RM
The chapter in the book that deals
with the architecture of Union Carbide in
relation to the biopolitics of the Bhopal event
was meant to demonstrate certain types of
discursive connections through which power
flows. Though provocative, one unintended
consequence of the intervention by the Yes
Men was that some Bhopal victims and their
relatives were misled into believing that
their claims had been settled. After all, one
does not simply speak on behalf of others
in unproblematic ways. So yes, agit-prop art
practice can be effective in identifying a crisis,
pointing out hypocrisy, and even transforming
expectations. But I dont think that any one
approach adequately matches the scale
of challenge. Systemic change is just that
systemic. And in order to think it, you have
to have something like a map of the system.
That is what I have tried to provide.
It is a truism to say that the contemporary
world system is composed of linkages and
connections. What might be less evident
is the nature of the power networks that, in
this case, connect Bhopal, India to Danbury,
Connecticut. The relations are not causal or
linear; the architecture of Union Carbides
Danbury headquarters did not produce the
gas leak. But it contributed to far-reaching
networks of subject formation. These networks
helped to maintain an international division
of labor predicated on the unequal value
of life in different but mutually dependent
accounting regimes. That is why the chapter
is about computation, in the end.
To your question, then, of other resistant
practicesyes, they abound. That is not
the problem. The problem is that the fragile
solidarities between regimes of knowledge
and practice that would enable a scaling up of
alternatives have become largely unthinkable.
Imagine today demanding that the stateany
stateadequately house its population. This
kind of demand may seem hopelessly nave
in a neoliberal age. Housing, one of modern
architectures core problems, has become
15
almost the sole province of the markets,
assisted by the state. Or, such a demand may
seem pater-nalistic. After all, the welfare state,
so well-serviced by architectural modernism,
was also a laboratory for working out the sorts
of biopolitical protocols and techniques that
have since been taken over by multinational
capital to administer the global lifeworld.
And yet, what we need is the intelli-gence and
imagination to work out systemic alternatives
to the status quo. Architecture can help
with that, rather directly, by demonstrating
possibilities that operate on different
premises than those operating a hegemonic
system of systems in which life and death
are variables in a great game.
JC
Lets return to housing. In the final
chapter of your book, you begin by calling
for the revisiting of the housing question.5
Similarly, in a recent lecture,6 you called for the
reinsertion of the public in public housing.
Though the notion of demanding the state to
adequately house its population is ridiculous
socio
in that it illuminates the states inability to do
so and, simultaneously, hopelessly nave
within a neoliberal framework, it appears to
be precisely the type of unthinkable thought
that the conjuring of Utopias ghost entails.
In a parallel train of thought, on the topic of
mapping power flows in relation to Union
Carbide, your larger narrative appeared to
be about the shift from a modern population
subject toward a postmodern mass
4 The Yes Men, posing as representatives from Dow
Chemical in 2004, distributed a fictitious press release
that took responsibility for the disaster in Bhopal and
offered reparations for the damage done by Union
Carbide. This caused a subsequent $2 billion dip in
Dows stock, forcing the company to rescind the press
release, emphatically stating that they did not take
any responsibility for the disaster and would have no
part in reparations. See http://theyesmen.org/hijinks/
bbcbhopal.
5 Martin, Utopias Ghost, 147. See also, Frederick
Engels, The Housing Question (New York: International
Publishers, n.d.).
6 Reinhold Martin and Jeffrey Kipnis, What Good Can
Architecture Do? The Harvard GSD Symposia on
Architecture, Nov 16, 2010.
 Reinhold Martin
customized individual subject. Could you
elaborate on whoor whatmight compose
the public in a newly conceived visit to
public housing and map its topology in
relation to the shifting form of the subject?
RM
It would not be too much of an
exaggeration to say that public or social
housing and the programs and policies
supporting it were a sine qua non of modern
architecture in Europe, Latin America, parts
of Asia, and to a lesser extent, the United
States. That is one reason why the demolition
of the Pruitt-Igoe public housing complex in
St. Louis in 1972 was received so symbolically
by postmodernists. Yes, there were massive,
complex problems. But the seemingly
incessant repetition of that image, of a
publics housing being demolished, and the
smug pleasure so many have covertly derived
from it, is one of the aesthetic obscenities
of our time. It even became national policy
thresholds 40
in the HOPE VI public housing demolition
program, which reflects the influence of the
New Urbanism. Still, even in 1972, it did not
seem at all ridiculous to expect the state to
take responsibility for housing its population,
despite the evident failures. That thought
only became widely accepted later, with the
definitive waning of the welfare state, as the
narratives driving privatization
were naturalized.
I am not suggesting that the modern
welfare state was some kind of utopia. On the
contrary, as so much critical social thought
has demonstrated, state-based programs
for the care and management of populations
were notorious disciplinary sites. From
housing to prisons to schools to hospitals,
such sites were recognized as arenas for the
reproduction of institutionalized norms that
managed desire, suppressed dissent, and
propagated a whole host of unfreedoms. Still
all of these institutions, distant progeny of
the Western Enlightenment, remain contested
sites for the enactment of social justice, as the
debates over universal health coverage in the
United States have testified. So in that sense,
public, or social, housing is fraught with
ambivalence and contradiction.
16
Most notably, this architectural type,
one of the greatif problematicinnovations
of modernism, is haunted by a utopian
aspiration that is not reducible to neoliberal
shibboleths like public-private partnerships,
which is an oxymoron when viewed from
a perspective that emphasizes conflicts
between nominally public and private
interests rather than some mystical synthesis.
The terms public and private are
themselves artifacts of a modernist sensibility
that is clearly inadequate to describe
contemporary realities. Yet such apparently
outmoded terminology highlights the cultural
narratives and norms that are inseparable
from these realities. To insist on reimagining
public housing is therefore to insist on
retaining the category of the public, and
with it of collectivity more generally (others
speak of a commons), as a locus for the
development of counternarratives and with
them, new mixtures of politics and practice.
Which brings us to the second part of
your question. Rather than being outmoded
under postmodernity, the modernist public,
with its connotations of universality and
standardization, has been multiplied,
made plural. But this new plurality brings
its own dilemmas, not the least of which is
its proximity to the forms of life elicited by
mass-customized consumerism. Here, the
standardization of the modernist masses is
replaced by a sort of micro-individuation,
whereby subjectivity is divided internally
along potentially conflicting lines of desire.
Rather than being liberating, the ever-
expanding rainbow of choices enabled by
mass customization represents a new turn
of the historical screw. Its corporate master
signifier is Apple instead of IBM. Which,
again, is not to say that liberation cannot
be sought in digitally produced forms of
differentiation, only that these techniques
tend to reproduce hegemonic narratives and
practices, such as those that oppose the
individual to the collective rather than seeing
individuality as a function of collectivity.
It would be quite different to think of the
hyper-individuated postmodern subject as
inherently collective, bound by solidarities
of various kinds, rather than as a sort of
 Conjuring Utopias Ghost

socio

Book cover copyright University of Minnesota Press.

17
 Reinhold Martin
meta-consumer. Imagined as a new public
for public housing, this collective would
emphatically include those who do not live
there, as well as those who do.
JC
The hegemonic narratives and practices
that you mention are curious in that they
oppose the individual to the collective
while simultaneously espousing ideals of
individualism at the expense of the collective.
As Dolores Hayden is fond of pointing out,
every owner of a single family home is, in
fact, a recipient of government-subsidized
housingthe subsidy is simply once removed
through tax credits rather than the directly
provided through housing projects.7 The
notion of imagining a new public as part and
parcel of rethinking public housing seems to
be crucial for moving beyond the narratives
that perpetuate these sorts of practices.
Now, in Utopias Ghost, you discuss
the mirror in depthas a feedback loop,
thresholds 40
as a medium for revealing and obscuring
the specters of Utopia, and, perhaps most
importantly, as the paradigmatic object
of postmodern architecture. Similarly, you
discuss the liberation found in seeing the
mirror, itself, rather than the image that it
contains. Can we facilitate this act of
seeing or should we, in fact, eschew the
mirror altogether?
RM
It is ironic to think that one can discuss
mirrors in depth, as you say, but that is
indeed what I have tried to do. But I dont
really want to suggest to architects what they
should or should not do with mirrors. I only
want to suggest that this eminently enigmatic
material (thinking of a mirror more as material
than as object) deserves a closer look. So the
question becomes: how to look at a mirror,
rather than in it.
The mirror also poses certain historical
questions that double back onto the
present. Utopias Ghost does not narrate a
history; instead, it asks us to think and work
historically when we write our history books
or, for that matter, when we do anything
else. In part, it is addressed to those
18
scholars who have now begun to rewrite
the history of architectural postmodernism
in its many aspects. It urges them to find
ways of taking into account their own
historical position. I know that some already
have. But what will it take for postmodern
architecture to be historicized in a way that
thoroughly denaturalizes the cavalier attitude
toward history that is among its defining
characteristics? It will be insufficient to
demystify its misnamed historicism. Nor will
it be adequate to apologize for its supposed
formalism. Nor, finally, will it be convincing to
break it down into its constituent parts and
deal with them one by one without reference
to larger processes, or simply to ignore
the whole thing entirely in favor of some
supposedly less treacherous alternative.
I deliberately refer to postmoder-nism as
something like a monolith here, not because
anything like that has ever actually existed,
but as a way of naming its hegemonic
character as a discourse. Postmodernism,
understood as a discursive formation, was
and remains the name we can givewith
all due apology for its reductivenessto
the congeries of cultural practices that
step outside of history in order to evade its
challenges. By stepping outside of history, I
mean backing oneself into a corner, stripped
of political agency and left only with a
historical imagination grasping at straws,
scouring the recent past for overlooked clues,
underappreciated precedents, rather than
looking right there on the surface of things.
And, again ironically, sometimes the best way
to evade the challenges of history is to write
history books.
Among the questions posed by the
mirror is that of writing a materialist history
of so-called dematerialization, including the
dematerialization of the public, which is one
of postmodernisms alleged hallmarks. I have
tried to suggest that, though this question
can return into the chambers of historical
materialism through the back door, it also
7 See Dolores Hayden, Building Suburbia: Green Fields and
Urban Growth, 1820-2000 (New York: Pantheon, 2003).
 Conjuring Utopias Ghost
opens onto other, perhaps less teleological,
pathways. Consider the mirrors materiality,
its manipulation of light, as a sort of archetypal
feedback loop. Interpreting such a loop as
a paradigm of historicity, of this-then-that-
then-this-then-that, would mean overturning
(or transvaluing) the whole set of values
associated with transparencywhether
optical, cognitive, or spatialthat channel
the historical imagination down a one way
street, from here to there, from this to that, and
replacing them with a new set.
One way to see this is to look at
materiality itself. Glass is not exactly
transparent. Nor is its materiality restricted to
what is actually visible. Likewise for mirrors,
which are not entirely opaque. Similarly, I
have tried to show that what we call oil is also
an elusive complex of material relationships,
some of which interact with supposedly more
architectural materials like mirrored glass.
We can extend such an inquiry further, into
the historical afterlife of transparent glass, by
asking: What does transparency do today?
It divides, repels, excludes just as often as it
welcomes, opens out, or includes. That is, it
mirrors. Think of all the borderlines that are
marked with transparent glass or something
like it, as if to say, welcome even as the
actual message to those defined as non-
belonging, conveyed by microphysical control
mechanisms like passwords, card readers,
or surveillance cameras, is unambiguously
keep out.
Such double binds are basic to the type
of historical experience we call postmodern.
Mirrored glass enacts transparency as
a sort of paradox. Like the whole host of
postmodern architectural devices with
which it combines, mirrored glass does not
hide anything. Nor does it mislead, except
in helping to produce what I would call the
illusion that there is an illusionthe illusion
that what youre looking at or thinking
about is not real. But it is real, as real as
the resulting double bind, which collapses
reality and illusion, and with these, freedom
and unfreedom, into a single surface, a sort
of closed loop. Unraveling such binds is the
principal challenge faced by historical work
on the recent past today.
19
JC
As a final question, I wonder if you
could relate this materialityand, indeed,
the paradoxical historical construction of
postmodernismback to the notion of
a plural public. It seems as though this
concept may shed light on one means to
unravel these problematic loops.
RM
Yes, we should certainly avoid idealizing
the public. We are all split, inside and
out. And setting aside such idealizations
can certainly mean multiplying the body
politic or pluralizing the public. But neither is
postmodern pluralismto each their ownan
acceptable alternative. Not only are material
resources unevenly distributed across
any such plurality. As I have tried to show
by recontextualizing mass customization,
apparently benign pluralism or multi-
culturalism is often configured around power
differentials that, for many, are matters of
life and death. So the more urgent question
may be one of how to form solidarities across
socio
such divides without presuming the a priori
existence of something like shared values or
even shared interests.
This is quite a burden to place on
architecture. It may even be too much to ask of
the historical interpretation of architecture, or
of any other cultural processes for that matter.
But architecture is an important mediator; you
can look at any building and learn something
about the world that it imagines, so to speak.
In other words, architecture helps to structure
the social imagination. That means that we
should be able to analyze any building in
terms of the publics, counterpublics, or other
collectivities that it anticipates or makes
visible, as well as those that it implicitly
brackets out.
So when we speak about architectures
materiality, we are actually speaking about a
set of mediating infrastructures, artifacts, and
processes. These include but are not limited
to the materials from which a building is
assembled, the economic factors and systems
of production that shape it, the social bodies
that pass through it, and so on. But I want
to end on what may seem a counterintuitive
 Reinhold Martin

note, by emphasizing the need to take formal

properties into account as well. Form is not
a matter of ideology, as is so often said of
architectural postmodernisms language
games. Nor does it reflect the autonomy
of aesthetic practices. On the contrary,
in architecture, form is a precondition for
politico-economic immanence; it is among
architectures ways of being in the world.
As a discourse, architecture mediates social
and economic relations by translating or
transcoding them into formal equivalents.
Analyze these forms and you are analyzing
the world.
thresholds 40

***
Reinhold Martin is an architect and Associate Professor of
Architecture at Columbia University, where he directs the Temple
Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture, and
the PhD program in Architecture. He holds a PhD from Princeton
University, as well as degrees from the Architectural Association
and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. A founding co-editor of the
journal Grey Room, he is also the author of The Organizational
Comple: Architecture, Media, and Corporate Space.

20
 Le Corbusier,
the Brise-Soleil,
and the
Socio-climatic
Project of
Modern
Architecture,
19291963
Daniel A. Barber
 Daniel A. Barber
Le Corbusiers vernacular turn in the
1930s has been a point of much discussion for
architectural historians. Why the shift away
from purism? Concerns about the climatic
performance of a building, it turns out, were
paramountnot only to Le Corbusiers shift,
but also to the direction modern architecture
would take in subsequent decades. By empha-
sizing the place of climate in the historiogra-
phy of Le Corbusiers turn, we can also indi-
cate that climate-based design methodologies,
addressed to problems of shading, ventilation,
and interior comfort, are an important and
under-recognized aspect of the reception of
modern architecture as a social project.
In order to analyze these developments,
the historical significance of the brise-soleil
will be tracedfirst, locating it in relationship
to the historiography of Le Corbusiers
vernacular turn, second, connecting this
discourse to interactions between architectural
thresholds 40
and climatic sciences in 1930s Brazil, and
third, placing the brise-soleil and shading
strategies in relationship to the bioclimatic
regionalisms and tropical architectures
of the 1950s. From this perspective, Le
Corbusiers vernacular turn initiated an
important moment both in the interaction
of architectural design with the expanding
technological demands of modern living,
and also in the contribution of design
strategies to the cultural, technological, and
bureaucratic regime of global environmental
managementa socio-climatic project of
modern architecture that has had long-lasting
and multivalent effects.
Conceptual Constants
In his essay The Vernacular, Modernism,
and Le Corbusier, Francesco Passanti argues
that the strength of early architectural
modernism was its potential to integrate
traditional design concepts with the new forms
and materials emerging from the processes
of industrialization. Tracing Le Corbusiers
formative yearsfrom the influence of the
regionalist painter Charles LEplattenier,
through his 1911 travels in the Balkans and
direct experience of a pre-modern culture, to
his engagement with the German Werkbund
in the late teens and twentiesPassanti writes:
He had begun within a movement
seeking to invent a regionalist
style, and he had ended by
arguing, with Loos and Muthesius,
that modern culture is best
described by the work of those
anonymous people, notably
engineers, who dont try to
invent a new aesthetic . 1
The integration of found, or vernacular,
knowledge and of the practices of anonymous
engineers, Passanti continues, was central to
the modern architectural project:
As a conceptual model this
notion of the vernacular was
important, because it could open
architecture to redefinition. ...
The vernacular model insisted
on connecting architecture to
something external to it, the
identity of society; and it further
insisted that such a connection
be not invented but found. ...
In the case of Le Corbusier, the
vernacular model provided
a conceptual structure for
integrating the new inputs into
the discipline of architecture and
for broadening its vocabulary
and responsibilities. 2
Passanti proposes that the conceptual model
of the vernacular was a constant, articulating
the persistent hope for a natural and organic
modern society, and for a natural relationship
of modern society and architecture; a
constant, Passanti insists, because it persisted
through his turn from purism.3
22
 Le Corbusier, the Brise-Soleil, and the Socio-climatic Project
The structure of this vernacular model
is also significant to our understanding of the
conceptual and methodological importance
of the brise-soleil. The emergence of modern
architectural shading techniques can be
mapped onto Passantis model in three ways.
First, the brise-soleil was a vernacular
object insofar that it followed on the use of
overhangs and other methods of shading in
folk or so-called primitive architectures
including, significantly, the pre-modern
architecture of Brazil. Second, it was found
by Le Corbusier in Brazil and in other regions
peripheral to the western European discourse
as a native response to the twentieth-century
problem of building multi-story concrete
structures with glazed facades. Third, the
quasi-scientific architectural and sociological
discourse generated by the proliferation of
the brise-soleil after World War II operated on
Passantis termsas a form of architectural
integration of new inputs. Such inputs
developed in concert with other concerns over
climate, providing a mechanism for both the
dynamic expansion of architectural vocabulary
and for the delicate insertion of architectural
methods into the new responsibilities of the
economic, industrial, and environmental
management of the post-colonial global South.
If the vernacular model is a constant
in the development of modern architecture
chez Le Corbusier, so is a general concern for
interior climatic comfort. The development of
the brise-soleil and the broader dissemination
of shading techniques can be seen as part
of a general concern with ventilation, light
and air, and other health-related issues that
framed the theories and practices of the
early modern movement.4 Colin Porteous
has recently emphasized that at least three
of Le Corbusiers Five Points of 1926 relate
directly to producing a salutary relationship
between internal and external climatic
conditions.5 Porteous reads the Villa Savoye
(1928) as central to Le Corbusiers inter-war
production because it realized his climatic
as much as his formal and constructive
23
ambitions. At the same time, Porteous sees the
contemporaneous Immeuble Wanner (1928-
1929), an unbuilt project for Geneva, as even
more innovative and transformative in this
regard, organizing the five points in creative
combination to productively address climatic
impacts. The Wanner project led to a different
design for the same client in the Immeuble
Clart (19321933), to which I will return.
Climate and the
Vernacular Turn
Amidst these conceptual constants
of climate and the vernacularthere is
nonetheless a significant shift in the treatment
of form, materials, and building processes
evident in Le Corbusiers work of the 1929-
1936 period. Kenneth Frampton proposes
that the turn away from purism and the
crystallization of a new direction was first
evident in the unbuilt Maisons Loucher
socio
(1929). The Loucher project had a combined
structural system of pilotis, a steel frame, and
a local rubble-stone party wall, intended to
be built by local masons. The trend continued
in the Maison Errazuris (1930), a project for
a coastal site in Argentina, which is cited by
1 Francesco Passanti, The Modern, the Vernacular, Le
Corbusier in Vernacular Modernism: Heimat, Globalization,
and the Built Environment, ed. Maiken Umbach and Bernd
Huppauf (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005), 153.
2 Ibid., 156.
3 Passanti continued: As Mary McLeod has shown, what
changed was the sense of where to seek the fulfillment of
such a hope. During the 1920s, Le Corbusier sought it in
the rationalist and abstract organization of industry and its
products; later, disillusioned by them, he sought it in a more
direct and holistic connection of people with people, and
people and techniques. Ibid., 155.
4 See Paul Overy, Light, Air and Openness: Modern Architecture
Between the Wars (London: Thames and Hudson, 2008), which
discusses the importance of these concerns to the Central
European developments of modernism.
5 Colin Porteous, The New Eco-Architecture: Alternatives from
the Modern Movement (London: Taylor and Francis, 2002),
51-55. For Porteous, the plan libre and faade libre enable
spatial configurations that promote routes for natural thermo-
circulation; the fenetre en longeur and the related pan de
verre allow for deep light penetration. The fourth point, the
jardins suspendu, further amplified the salubrious effects of
these various elements.
 Daniel A. Barber

Frampton as the point in which Le Corbusier

made a total break with the Purist machine
aesthetic in that the double-height volume of
the house was to be covered by monopitched
roofs sloping inwards toward a central gutter.6
As Frampton describes it, through these and
other examples, Le Corbusiers turn was
conditioned by the possibility of integrating
traditional practices and materials with
modern methods and designs FIG. 1 .7
FIG. 2 Le Corbusier, Cit des Refuges, Paris, 1933 (model).

to harness the materials, resources, and sites

necessary to further the project of the modern
office building as a climatic management
object FIG. 2 .8 In both of these projects, Le
Corbusiers vision was focused on an active
climatic strategy he called respiration exacte,
one of the more prominent early proposals for
a complete system of heating, ventilation, and
air conditioning. As Frampton described it:
thresholds 40

A building was supposed to be heated

and cooled by tempered air being
distributed throughout via an all-
enveloping plenum, integral with
its outer skin. These neutralizing
walls, as [Le Corbusier] called them,
were to be made up of an inner and
outer glass membrane, with an air-
space in between, constituting a
FIG. 1 L
 e Corbusier, Maison Errazuriz, Argentina, 1930 (unbuilt)
and Maison de Weekend, Paris, 1934.
jacket through which either warmed
or cooled air would be passed
Historians have also looked to the through according to the season
parallel emergence of the brise-soleil to of the year. 9
understand the origins and significance of Le
Corbusiers turn. At issue is the purported Such a system was proposed in both Paris and
climatic efficiency of the sealed glass curtain Moscow, though bureaucratic budget cutting
wall. The Immeuble Clart in particular, as frustrated both attempts. The insulating
Frampton notes, was designed right after Le curtain walls were built, hermetically sealing
Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneretaccustomed, the buildings, but little or no mechanical
as Frampton puts it, to over-reaching ventilation or air conditioning was employed.
themselves technicallyhad come closest to The result was in both cases a greenhouse box,
realizing their technocratic vision. At both cold in the winter and unbearably hot in
the Cit des Refuge (1929-1933) in Paris and the summer.
the Centrosoyuz (1928-1936) in Moscow, that Frampton proposes that the technological
vision relied on the power of public agencies and bureaucratic barriers that prevented Le

24
 Le Corbusier, the Brise-Soleil, and the Socio-climatic Project
FIG. 3 Le Corbusier, Immeuble Clart, Geneva, 1930-32. From Le Corbusier, Oeuvre Complete, 1910-69.
Corbusier from successfully implementing
the respiration exacte system led to a life-
changing loss of faith in the manifest destiny
of the machine age, and thus to a new
approach to climate that would first develop
at Immeuble Clart.10 Reyner Banham is
somewhat more ambivalent in summarizing
these events, indicating that Le Corbusiers
obstinate environmental misapprehensions
at the Cit des Refuges led to the invention of
the brise-soleil, while conceding that there
can be no doubt that, however desperate
its motivations, the brise-soleil is one of [Le
Corbusiers] most masterly inventions, and one
of the last structural innovations in the field of
environmental management.11
At the Immeuble Clart, Le Corbusier
did not attempt a mechanically sophisticated
system. The building deployed a collection
of low cost, user intensive, and formally
dynamic sun-shading devicesbalconies,
external blinds, retractable awnings, and
interior shutters blocked and modulated solar
incidence FIG. 3 .12 Though much more than a
brise-soleil, the basic principle was established:
as part of the turn away from his faith in
the machine age, Le Corbusier proposed
architectural elements to manage those interior
climatic conditions that the mechanical systems
approach had proven unable to engage.
25
The Brise-soleil in Brazil
As Banham also pointed out, Le Corbusier
had an explicit internationalist program for
the respiration exacte, intending to produce
one single building for all nations and
climates.13 From the 30s to the 50s, before
socio
the widespread use of mechanical HVAC
systems, the brise-soleil operated on these
termsas a techno-cultural object able to
mediate a variety of climatic conditions.
Following the Clart experiment, the brise-
soleil was proposed for the Maison Locative
(1933) at Algiers. This project, a 12-story
hillside tower, also called for the misconceived
respiration exacte, but included a concrete
6 Kenneth Frampton, Le Corbusier and Oscar Niemeyer:
Influence and Counterinfluence, 1929-1965, in Latin American
Architecture, 1929-1960: Contemporary Reflections, ed. Carlos
Brillembourg (New York: Monacelli Press, 2004), 37.
7 Other relevant examples include the Maison de Weekend
(1935), the first Maison Jaoul project (1937), the projected
Roq et Rob vacation houses (1949), and the second Maison
Jaoul (1952-54). See Kenneth Frampton, Modern Architecture:
A Critical History (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1986), 224;
and Kenneth Frampton, Le Corbusier (New York: Thames and
Hudson, 2001), 130-149.
8 Frampton, Le Corbusier, 101.
9 Frampton, Le Corbusier and Oscar Niemeyer, 101. See also
Porteous, The New Eco-Architecture, 67.
10 Frampton, Le Corbusier, 101.
11 Reyner Banham, Architecture of the Well-Tempered Environ-
ment (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969), 158.
12 Porteous, The New Eco-Architecture, 62.
13 Banham, Architecture of the Well-Tempered Environment,
quoting Le Corbusier in Precisions (1930).
 Daniel A. Barber

Designed by a team
of Brazilian architects
including Lucio Costa,
Oscar Niemeyer, Alfonso
Reidy, and othersand with
extensive consultation by
Le Corbusierit established
the international model for a
climatically sensitive modern
office building FIG. 5. The
north (sun-facing) facade has
three-fin modules of operable
louvers in egg-crate frames,
suspended from a balcony for
heat dispersion. The south
facade is unshaded glass, and
the blind walls at each end
are sheathed in pink marble.
In plan, the design proposed
a simple rectangle for the
tower, offset by a more
thresholds 40

organic volume for

the theater.
Brazil in the 1940s, isolated
FIG. 4 O
 scar Neimeyer, Obra do Bero, Rio de Janeiro, 1937. from the world at war, saw
From Heinrich Mindlin, Modern Architecture in Brazil, 1955. what was likely the largest

grid of protruding shading elements on the sun

exposed facades.14
This basic formula was reproduced by
a number of Corbusier-influenced architects
in Brazil: by early 1936, MMM Robertos
Associao Brasileira de Imprensa (ABI) and
Oscar Niemeyers Obra do Bero, both in Rio
de Janeiro, established the use of varied brise-
soleil facades to manage internal climate.15
Whereas the ABI, like the Maison Locative,
had uniform fixed diagonal slabs on the north
and west facades, the more sophisticated Obra
do Bero had independent, operable brise-soleil
on each floor. This operability, as well as the
capacity for different treatments for different
orientation or programmatic conditions,
established the model for sun-shading FIG. 4 .
The Ministerio da Educao e da Sade
(MES) building (19361943), also in Rio, FIG. 5 O
 scar Neimeyer, Lucio Costa, Alfonso Reidy, et al., Ministry of
Education and Health, Rio de Janeiro, 1936-1943. From Victor and
was the culmination of this early period. Aladar Olgyay, Solar Control and Shading Devices, 1957.

26
 Le Corbusier, the Brise-Soleil, and the Socio-climatic Project

sustained production of modern buildings up make it possible to calculate accurately and

to that point. The brise-soleil was a necessary
component of the work of Niemeyer, MMM
Roberto, Luiz Nues, Paulo Antunes Ribeiro,
and many others working in Brazil and gaining
international attention FIG. 6 . Brazilian architect
and historian Henrique E. Mindlin, in his
Modern Architecture in Brazil (1955), is matter
of fact about the centrality of both the brise-
soleil and of Le Corbusier to the proliferation
of modern architecture in Brazil from the
mid-30s. The brise-soleil, Mindlin wrote,
(in Portuguese quebra-sol or sun-breaker,
but that the French expression is commonly
used indicates its direct derivation from Le
Corbusier) has been applied in Brazil in the
greatest variety of ways.16 Mindlin argued for
the importance of the brise-soleil according
to three main factors. First, he described the
importance of research into the functions of
sunlight in So Paulo engineering schools at
the turn of the century, and
the consequent development
solve any sunlight problem.17
Mindlins second factor was the
development of an advanced technique for
the use of reinforced concrete. The industrial
infrastructure of Brazil, he noted, already
allowed for widespread use of concrete;
additional concrete for the brise-soleil was
thus an exceptionally efficient means to
manage internal climate. Mindlins third factor
touches on Passantis conceptual constant:
Reminiscences of and variations on the
traditional colonial screens and shutters are
frequently found in the details of the brise-
soleil, [leading to] expressions of the past
re-occurring in the vernacular now being
formed. This integration of the vernacular
with contemporary demands of climatic
management suggest how a formal approach
could connect design methodology to
economic and political concerns.18

socio
of a scientific basis for the
orientation and sun-lighting
of buildings in architecture
schools by the mid-20s. As
Mindlin summarized, easily
handled sunlight graphs
and tables, in general use by
architects for decades now,

14 The Greek-Brazilian architect Stamo

Papadaki is seen by Jeffrey Aronin,
Porteous, and others as the first to
use the brise-soleil in his proposed
Christopher Columbus Memorial
Lighthouse of 1928. See Jeffrey
Aronin, Climate and Architecture
(New York: Reinhold, 1953).
15 Costa was appointed director of the
Esquela Nacional de Bellas Artes in
1930, right after Le Corbusiers first
trip to Brazil, largely as a result of his
allegiance to Corbusian modernism.
16 Mindlin, Modern Architecture in
Brazil, 11. Mindlin initially wrote the
bookwith an introduction by Sigfried
Giedeonto accompany the 1943
Brazil Builds exhibition at MoMA. FIG. 6 M
 MM Roberto, Seguradoras Building, Rio de Janeiro, 1949. From Victor and
17 Ibid., 11. Aladar Olgyay, Solar Control and Shading Devices, 1957.

27
 Daniel A. Barber
Beyond Mindlins mid-century analysis,
the MES has been regarded recently as
central to another conceptual constant that
weathered the vernacular turn: Le Corbusiers
investment in the bureaucratic elite as the
ideal client for modern architecture. In
the post-war period, this tendency allows
for connections to be drawn to the then-
emergent bureaucracy of global environmental
management. Le Corbusier had always been
interested in engaging figures of authority
politicians, technocrats and bureaucrats,
engineers, and civic leaderson his travels.
Yonnis Tsiomis has recently proposed that this
was especially the case during the 1936 visit
to Brazil, due in large part to Le Corbusiers
frustration with the conditions in Europe.19
Such interest was no doubt encouraged by the
near-direct invitation to Brazil extended by the
client of the MES, the Minister of Education
and Health Gustavo Campanema. Much like
thresholds 40
Raoul Dautry and Eugene Claudius-Petit,
Ministers of Reconstruction et Urbanisme in
France right after the war and Le Corbusiers
clients on the well known Unite dHabitation
(1952), among other buildings, Capanema
was a high-ranking official devoted to modern
architecture on cultural terms, and supportive
of it as a public representation of his own
modernization initiatives and strategies. If
Le Corbusier had lost faith in the manifest
destiny of the machine age, he had not lost
his interest in architecture as a techno-
bureaucratic device for managing industrial
growth and shaping social conditions. In
this context, the brise-soleil came to be a
provocative formal and technological response
to the climatic, political, and economic
pressures encountered by architects working
in tropical regions.
Post-war Proliferations
After the war, the brise-soleilwas
central to two innovations of the modern
architectural discourse: the bio-climactic
regionalism codified by Victor and Aladar
Olgyay, and the tropical architecture
approach summarized by Maxwell Fry and
Jane Drew. Both developments were modeled
on the Corbusian use of the brise-soleil. The
Olgyays summarized their method through
a comparative analysis of Miess 1951
Lake Shore Apartments (reliant on a large
mechanical ventilation system); Harrison &
Abramowitzs 1954 Republic Bank in Dallas
(an aluminum breathing wall); Skidmore,
Owings, and Merrills 1952 Lever House (with
custom tinted glass effective for deflecting
summer radiation but not for keeping winter
heat in); and finally, Le Corbusiers 1953 Unit
dHabitation. As the Olgyays explained, The
last example illustrates a radiation control
solution with shading devices. The method
is fundamentally sound. Interception of the
energy happens at the right placebefore it
attacks the building. ... Here, by shaping the
devices according to the changing seasonal
sun-path, both summer shading and utilization
of winter energies can be performed.20 Noting
that Le Corbusierat least at the Unitdid
not carefully consider all of these climatic
elements, especially as regards the buildings
orientation, they nonetheless saw themselves
following Le Corbusier by using the brise-soleil as
an architectural solution to climatic challenges.
The Olgyays method was based on using
diverse shading devices on different facades in
combination with operable louvers to provide
heating, cooling, and ventilation amidst
numerous climatic conditions. A bioclimatic
building, they proposed, organized an
interlocking field of balance between regional
climate, technological possibility, biological
knowledge, and architectural technique.21
Their method involved analyzing sun-
charts to identify potential overheated and
.
18 Ibid.
19 Yonnis Tsiomis, Introduction, in Le Corbusier,
Conferences de Rio: Le Corbusier au Bresil, 1936 (Paris:
Flammarion, 2006), 67.
20 Victor Olgyay and Aladar Olgyay, Solar Control & Shading
Devices (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957), 7.
28
 Le Corbusier, the Brise-Soleil, and the Socio-climatic Project
underheated periods; testing site-orientation
against sunlight modeling systems; determining
the contextual sky-vault conditions of
existing shading elements; and calibrating it
all to determine an appropriate sun-mask
shape which correlated to a specific shading
device strategy FIG. 7 .22 Through this complex
system, the Olgyays participated in a dramatic
re-conception of the internal environment
of a building, directing their efforts towards
producing an optimum zone for human activity.
Somewhat ironically, their careful method
to determine thermal comfort would be
rescripted to fit the specification parameters
for mechanical HVAC systems as the 50s
progressed FIG. 8 .
Maxwell Fry and Jane Drews Tropical
Architecture in the Dry and Humid Zones (1956),
the 1953 conference it summarized, their
1947 Village Housing in the Tropics, and their
involvement with the planning of Chandigarh
in the 1950s also reflected the influence of Le
Corbusier and of the brise-soleil on the post-
war discourse of climate and architecture. Their
work is also explicit about how the climatic
facility of modern architecture led to a regional
approach of managing industrialdevelopment
after the collapse of colonial regimes.
The argument in Tropical Architecture
in the Dry and Humid Zones is tied to narratives
of economic development. Following the
dissolution of direct British control of former
West African colonies, Fry and Drew advocated
for design principles that facilitate economic
and infrastructural management FIG. 9 . The act
of building, Fry and Drew wrote, must probe
deeply into the productive possibilities of a
country... leading to a more complete and more
secure mastery over circumstances.23 Passive
climate mitigation, they argued, provided
better conditions for economic growth in
areas removed from infrastructure: it both
improved the living conditions of the worker
and provided comfortable accommodations for
western agents of industry and government.
Tropical architectures innovations can
be seen as attempts to use architecture to
29
mediate betweenpolitical, social, and climatic
complications.
In conclusion, it is important to note
that the globalization of the environmental
discourse, occurring in this same period,
also depended heavily on the conceptual
formulation of the tropics on the part of
Western European and American industrial-
ists and bureaucrats.24 The Olgyays interest
in climate converges with a broader inter-
disciplinary effort, involving the natural and
social sciences, to articulate a socio-political
concept of the environment. The tropical
architecture discourse further suggests an
intertwining of formal, technological, and bureau-
cratic histories in managing the ecological and
economic conditions of industrial development.
The point here is not to invest architectural
strategies with explicit political import, but
rather to indicate the continuing impact
of the architectural discourse on tropes of
modernity and modernizaton. At the limit, an
expanded history of modern architecture can
socio
engage the socio-climatic legacy of inter-war
innovations for their implicationsintentional
or otherwisein the production of cultural,
technological, and bureaucratic regimes of
global environmental management. This brief
history of the brise-soleil suggests a vital
connection between the formal implications
of Le Corbusiers vernacular turn, and the
geopolitical and geoeconomic significance
of climatic managementone that is inflected
anew amid the current concern over a
warming climate.
21 Victor Olgyay and Aladar Olgyay, Design with Climate:
Bioclimatic Approach to Architectural Regionalism (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1963), 12.
22 The contemporary building performance modeling software
Autodesk Ecotect appears to be based directly on the
Olgyays method.
23 Ibid., 25.
24 Although tropical rainforest deforestation is only a small piece
of the environmental crisis, the rainforest connection has
since the 1950s been central in the scientific and popular
construction of global-change knowledge. See Peter J.
Taylor and Frederick H. Buttel, How Do We Know We Have
Environmental Problems? Science and the Globalization of the
Environmental Discourse, Geoforum 23, no. 3 (1992): 410.
 Daniel A. Barber

FIG. 9 Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew, British Petroleum Building, Lagos, 1960. From Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew, Tropical Architecture in the Dry and Humid Zones, 1964.
thresholds 40

FIG. 7 Victor and Aladar Olgyay, Vocabulary of Shading Devices. From Victor and Aladar Olgyay,
Solar Control and Shading Devices, 1957.

FIG. 8 Victor and Aladar Olgyay, Schematic Bioclimatic Index. From Victor and
Aladar Olgyay, Solar Control and Shading Devices, 1957.

30
 Daniel A. Barber
thresholds 40

***
Daniel A. Barber is an architectural historian analyzing affinities
between the history of architecture and the emergence of
environmentalism in the 20th century. Daniel received a BA in
Comparative History of Ideas from the University of Washington,
and a PhD in Architecture (History and Theory) from Columbia
University. He also holds a Master of Environmental Design from
the Yale School of Architecture, and an MFA in Studio Art from
Mills College.

32
 Move
Along!
There Is
Nothing
to See
Rania Ghosn
 Rania Ghosn
The police say there is nothing
to see, nothing happening,
nothing to be done, but to
keep moving, circulating;
they say that the space of
circulation is nothing but the
space of circulation. Politics
consists in transforming that
space of circulation into the
space of the manifestation
of a subject: be it the people,
workers, citizens. It consists
in reconfiguring that space,
what there is to do there,
what there is to see or name.
It is a dispute about the
division of what is perceptible
to the senses.
Jacques Rancire 1
thresholds 40
In a meditation on the French revolt of
May 1968, the philosopher Jacques Rancire
established a theoretical framework,
presenting the political as an unremitting
confrontation in the name of equality between
police and politics. Rancire defines the
notion of police as a symbolic constitution
of the social, which defines society as parts
by naming an order of intelligible bodies and
sensory experiences. Politics, on the other
hand, is distinguished from this notion as
the partaking in the common. It is the
manifestation of dissensus from those who
have no part in the polices distribution of
the sensible, and the subsequent rupture of
the normal distribution of roles, places, and
occupations within.
What is the significance of space in the
unremitting confrontation between police
and politics? The distinctive spatiality of
Rancires thought makes it compelling
for addressing the politics of the socially
conscious project, and distinguishing
between a police project, which reproduces
a consensual space of communitarian
interests, and a project that constantly
interrogates already-defined social projects
in the name of equity. According to Rancire,
the police operate to reproduce consensus
by the adulation of communitarianism,
which reduces the social to the closure of
identity politics. The police further contain
politics by defining and appropriating a
space of flows, which inherently prohibits
a subject-position. The verbal intervention
to break up demonstrations, Move along!
There is nothing to see, illustrates how the
organization of space operates toward the
consolidation of police order. For Rancire,
the police intervention is less about
interpellating individual demonstrators in
public space (i.e., the hey, you there of
the interpellating cop in Louis Althussers
staging2 of how ideology functions). Rather,
the police seek to parcel out places and forms
of participation in a common world. They are
concerned with the definition of a domain
of the sensible, a partition between what is
visible and what is not, what is say-able and
what is not, within that order.3 Move along!
There is nothing to see seeks to control the
sensible by establishing certain modalities
and ranges of perception while denying
others. The impossibility of the witness is a
necessary apparatus of the police. Political
beings whose politic the police do not wish
to acknowledge are denied a voice by not
understanding what they say, by not hearing
that it is an utterance coming out of their
mouths.4 Similarly, political spaces whose
politic the police do not wish to address are
externalized to the banlieue, the hinterland,
or the underground. They are dropped into
black holes of representation or blurred by the
speed of moving along.
Rancires thought provides a reading
of the social as an anti-political apparatus of
1 Jacques Rancire, Ten Thesis on Politics, Theory and Event
5, no. 3 (2001).
2 Louis Althusser, Ideology and Ideological State
Apparatuses, in Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays (New
York: New Left Books, 1971), 163.
3 Jacques Rancire, The Politics of Aesthetics (London:
Continuum, 2004), 84. See also, Jacques Rancire, Politics,
Identity and Subjectivization, October 61 (1992): 58-64.
4 Rancire, Ten Thesis on Politics, 8.23.
34
 Move Along! There Is Nothing to See
rule that disciplines disagreement in terms
commensurate with an order of intelligible
bodies, a distribution and counting of the
parts of society. The police, according to
Rancire, is the structured embodiment of the
common through the process of identification,
which, in the name of consensus, categorizes
every individual into specific identifiable
profilessuch as populations, or
communities. Identification is further
reinforced with the conflation of social
and spatial formations, which tames and
naturalizes difference to reinforce consensus.
Henri Lefebvre, another protagonist of the
68 events, emphasizes the spatiality of the
police by arguing that the exercise of the
social is fundamentally a spatial project, for
what is an ideology without a space to which
it refers, a space which it describes, whose
vocabulary and links it makes use of, and
whose code it embodies?5 The space of the
police, or what Lefebvre refers to as abstract
space, dissimulates the violence of its
ordering behind a homogeneous appearance
which subsumes distinctions into specialized
spaces, subdivided into spaces for work and
spaces for leisure, into daytime and nighttime
spaces.6 The dead end of the political lies
precisely in the identification of politics with
the body of the community as consensus
becomes the suppression of the litigiousness
constitutive of the political and identitarianism
the flip side of this suppression.7
Move along! There is nothing to see is
the assertion that the space of circulating is
nothing other than the space of circulation.8
The police parcel out the common in terms of
social groups and their respective identities
and places. This act, and the carving out of
the space of circulation, are an exclusive
domain for the polices reinforcement of the
distribution of parts. The space of circulation
divides into the dynamic and static, into the
moving and the still, to ensure a continuous
flow. When William Harvey promulgated his
ideas on the double circulation of blood in
the vascular system of the human body in
1628, the concept began to permeate and
infiltrate urbanism and intellectual thought.9
The ideology of circulation associated the
modern city with efficient organization and
unimpeded growth of complex networks
of flows. To favor the predominance of a
frictionless space of circulation, urbanization
implied a contract of non-violence, which
tended toward the reinforcement of consensus.
However, denial by the police of a surplus
of community parts inevitably produces
remainders from within, against which politics
arise. The contours of disagreement, for
Rancire, emerge as those who are denied a
part in a given order embark in a process of
de-classification as a function of an injustice
that needs to be addressed. Whereas
identification is a reproducible difference at
the service of consensus, subjectivization is
the process by which the part-with-no-part
extracts itself from the dominant categories
of identification and classification.10 This
struggle necessarily entails a clash between
two partitions of the sensible, a noise
that the unacknowledged part makes in an
embodiment of a capacity of enunciation
that was not previously articulated.11 Such
political action is neither conflict between
socio
one who says white and another who says
black, nor a transformation of the processes
of exclusion to include those who are
discriminated against. Disagreement, for
Rancire, is the conflict between one who
says white and another who says white but
does not understand the same thing by it or
does not understand that the other is saying
the same things in the name of whiteness.12
The politics of subjectivization is thus less
resistance within particular divisions, and
more dissensus around the partitioning and
control of the sensible.
5 Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space (Oxford, UK:
Blackwell, 1991), 41.
6 Ibid., 319.
7 Jacques Rancire, Dissenting Words: A Conversation with
Jacques Rancire, Diactrics 30, no. 2 (Summer 2000): 113-126.
8 Rancire, Ten Thesis on Politics, 8.22.
9 Erik Swyngedouw, Circulations and Metabolisms: (Hybrid)
Natures and (Cyborg) Cities, Science as Culture 15, no.
2 (2006): 105-121; Matthew Gandy, Rethinking Urban
Metabolism: Water, Space and the Modern City, City 8, no. 3
(2004): 363-379.
10 Rancire, Politics of Aesthetics, 92.
11 Rancire, Ten Thesis on Politics, 8.25.
12 Jacques Rancire, Dis-agreement: Politics and Philosophy, trans.
Julie Rose (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999).
35
 Rania Ghosn
thresholds 40

Published by Duke University Libraries, in

The Emergence of Advertising in America: 1850 1920, 1913.

36
Move Along! There Is Nothing to See

socio

Published by Duke University Libraries, in

The Emergence of Advertising in America: 1850 1920, 1912.

37
 Rania Ghosn
Politics consist of transforming the
space of circulation into a space for the
manifestation of a subject.13 In a divided,
streamlined space, bodies move away from
their designated parts. The part-with-no-
part stands still to assert multiple possible
meanings of whiteness. In the process, space
is no longer the domain for the reinforcement
of a social order but, rather, the apparatus
through which politics are engaged. While the
space of flows requires protestors to clear
the streets, to move along, the act of standing
still refigures what there is to do in the
streets, what there is to see or to name. The
demonstration of rights opens up the politics
of the formations of the common, away from
the closure of defined social categories.
If the social is, above all, a certitude about
what is not there, then May 68 was, above all,
a massive refusal to see in the social what we
usually see: nothing more than the narrowest
of identity categories and the reproduction
of consensus. In May 68 and its Afterlives,
thresholds 40
Kristen Ross argues that the identification of
the events with the identity or interests of the
students, obscures the broader political
significance of the uprisings: the events were
only loosely tied to a youth revolt and were
more concerned with displacements that took
people outside of their social identifications,
with a disjunction, that is, between political
subjectivity and the social group.14 The
protestors refused the closure of assigned
categoriesbe it based on generation, class,
or nationalityand their identification with
spatial spheres.
So how can Rancires reconfiguration
of the political be significant to architectures
political project? Can architecture disrupt the
closure of social symbols by interrogating the
construction of solid social concepts and of
fixed or defined subject positions? Can it look
precisely into where there is nothing to see
to differently represent the common? Michael
Hays proposes architecture as a socially
symbolic production whose primary task is
the construction of concepts and subject
positions, a way of negotiating the real,
[of] intervening in the realm of symbols and
signifying processes at the limit of the social
order itself.15 In his call for the science of
the imaginary, Reinhold Martin presents
two particularly urgent tasks of the aesthetic
and the territorial: the first, which makes
the invisible visible, the second which
breaks open the enclosure and enclaves
that disposes these outside or inside of
both political and cultural representation.16
As the propositions by Rancire, Hays,
and Martin suggest, architecture can be a
process of declassification that disrupts
the social significance of places and their
correspondence with identity-communities.
Architecture can interrogate the assumptions
and representations that sustain circulatory
flow. Thus, a socially conscious project does
not seek to solve inequalities or promote a
social character for spaces. It is not caught
in the socially relevant categories as defined
and reproduced in political circles. Rather,
it seeks to challenge existing categories as
a process of continuous intervention in the
name of equality. This project is fundamentally
political at the moment it disturbs the
socialized consensual order of solidified
social categories by opening the domain of
relevant spatial concerns. It brings spaces
that were previously erased as insignificant
matters of fact into focus as matters of
concern.17 Architecture is political when it
engages in a quarrel on perceptible givens,
calling into question nothing less than the
spatial and perceptual organization of our world.
13 Rancire, Dis-agreement, 30.
14 Kristin Ross, May 68 and its Afterlives (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2002), 3.
15 K. Michael Hays, Architectures Desire: Reading the Late
Avant-Garde (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010): 1.
16 Reinhold Martin, Moment of Truth, Log 7 (Winter/Spring
2006): 15-20.
17 Bruno Latour, Why has Critique run out of Steam? From
Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern, Critical Inquiry 30,
no. 2 (Spring 2004): 225-248.
***
Rania Ghosn is an architect, geographer, and currently Assistant
Professor of Architecture at the University of Michigan. She
completed a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship at Boston University,
and holds degrees from American University of Beirut, University
College London, and Harvard University. She has taught at
a number of schools and has written for a variety of journals,
including New Geographies where she is Founding Editor. Her
research explores nature, technology, and power, highlighting
the territorial domain of infrastructure, particularly that of energy.
38
 Flows
Socio-spatial
Formation

Nana Last
 Nana Last
Emerging at the confluence of order,
agency, and socio-spatial formation is the
architectural question of flow. Invoked from
the genetic and molecular levels to wide-scale
socio-economic processes, material logics, and
natural formations, flow is at once formal,
material, operational, environmental, and ex-
periential. It is seen to arise in various forma-
tions and systems, ranging from building and
climatic to environmental and informational.
In the dictionary, flow is defined as a
continuous stream of something, or as a being
swept along according to some set of forces. In
discussions of capitalisms operations, flow is
invoked to describe the movement of informa-
tion, money, and trade. In psychology, flow is
defined as an energized focus, or the mental
state of operation in which the person is fully
immersed in what he or she is doing. In a state
of flow, the emotions are not simply contained
and channeled, but positive, energized, and
thresholds 40
aligned with the task at hand.1 In architecture,
flow is described in opposition to rationalized
or stable forms, producing, instead, non-stable
geometries that are difficult to pin down or
solidify. Following this thinking, flow is in-
voked in a range of architecture practices as
overcoming entrenched dichotomies including
those between object/field, container/con-
tained, and nature/culture.
Whereas psychology has clearly defined
flow as a mental state, the complex position-
ing of architecture as process, design, material
manifestation, spatial organizer, form of inhab-
itation, and so on, compounds the ambiguities
in flows architectural use. To begin, what is it
that flows? Is it the material or the inhabitants
that are flowing? Is it that which directs and
structures space or the space itself? Or is it the
experience of the space? These unanswered
questions arising around the construct of flow
leave it unclear whether architectures materi-
ality forms flows, or forms channels and mark-
ers of flows.
Free Speech
To unpack these issues, consider an idea
that became apparent during an architecture
review where the concept of flow was in-
voked pertaining to people, space, buildings,
and landforms.
Much of the discussion hinged upon
the projects constructing, enacting, and order-
ing flows. However, people do not necessarily
flow in accordance with designs, and further-
more, beyond the specific disciplinary concerns
of architecture, there are important instances
where flows spatial or architectural applica-
tion was invoked, yet unrecognized. For ex-
ample, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmess 1919
Supreme Court opinion in which by declaring
that the most stringent protection of free
speech would not protect a man falsely shout-
ing fire in a theatre and causing panic,2
he implicitly tied together the limits of free
speech to spatial ordering and human behavior.
Flow enters here as at the seat of Hol-
mess thinking is the image of an ordered mass
audience who upon hearing the call fire do
not necessarily proceed to flow smoothly and
orderly out of the rows of seating. Instead,
they potentially erupt in all directions, perhaps
crushing others on the way. In this example,
the architectural space imagined as a prop
for the decision combines with the issue at
stakethat of the limits of free speechto
define associations between action and space of
action. This is not merely coincidental as, along
with the Holmes decisions reliance on flow
and architectural space, one of the hallmarks
1 Proposed by Mihly Cskszentmihlyi, the positive psychology
concept has been widely referenced across a variety of fields.
2 In this case, the limitation on free speech was employed to
deny the petition of John Schenck who had been arrested for
distributing pamphlets disputing the legality of the draft during
the First World War.
3 See Jesse Reiser and Nanako Umemoto, Atlas of Novel
Tectonics (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2006).
They are not alone in this, as other architecture practices
that employ flow insist on maintaining such distinctions by
contending that architecture isand needs to beengaged
in real material flows and not what are deemed to be mere
representations of them.
40
 Flows Socio-spatial Formation
of it and other free speech decisions is the
distinction drawn between speech and con-
duct, or action. Into this the decision, Holmes
tacitlybut fundamentallyadds space, trans-
forming the speech-action dichotomy into a
speech-action-space trichotomy.
Approached this way, the Holmes exam-
ple brings to the fore architectural construc-
tions that have been collapsed within practice.
In particular, it highlights distinctions between
the understanding of architecture as physical
form or material presence, and architecture
as container and director of space and action.
This duality becomes apparent in two strate-
gies repeatedly used by architecture practices
that develop flow. In both strategies, the con-
struct of flow aspires toward the development
of order. The first strategy entails importing
outside models of flowfrequently from
nature and the sciencesinto architectural
design. In addition to the transfer of materials
and disciplines, the imported models harbor
complex dialogs between physical and social
processes. While such dialogs are inherent to
architecture, when articulated through the
interchange with outside models, they provide
an explicit basis for architectures critical rela-
tions to society. This is to say that by explicitly
incorporating outside models of flow, architec-
ture makes manifest social and epistemological
formations along with material and spatial
ones. This occurs, for example, in the work of
Zaha Hadid when parametricism is related
to natural systems such as swarms and avant-
garde styles are seen as analogous to scientific
paradigms.
The second strategy frequently imple-
mented is to employ flow to turn back on
architecture and dismantle its own entrenched
dichotomies. While flows channeling of ma-
terials and energies suggests containment, its
ability to transmute and transform boundaries
(i.e., to make boundaries fluid) simultane-
ously harbors the potential to dismantle the
strict boundaries constitutive to dichotomies.
Flow achieves this dismantling by connecting
components of architectural space: its forma-
41
tion, ordering, occupation, and experience. In
order to rethink how boundaries are formed,
navigated, and functioning, architectural mod-
els of flow oscillate seamlessly between what
had been previously conceived as dichoto-
mous positions, as between being container
and contained, between director of space and
operations, and being directed and operated.
In Atlas of Novel Tectonics, Jesse Reiser and
Nanako Umemoto highlight this potential by
pointing to a series of dichotomies tradition-
ally germane to the definition of architecture
that are dismantled through flow, including
that between container and contained, and
between object and field. Yet while Reiser and
Umemoto employ flow to subvert this set of
dichotomies, they uphold associated ones
notably that between the real and the meta-
phorical.3 This, however, opposes the thrust
of flows processes by locating and delimiting
architecture to previously conceived, clear
compartments that hide or suppress inherent
contradictions. If unleashed, such dismantling
socio
brings with it the potential to mix material-
ity with form, materiality with behavior, and
materiality with representation. Consequences
of this intermixing are apparentif not always
acknowledgedin the past decades preoc-
cupation with new forms of mass production,
hybrid categories, and monsters. Through
such processes, flow sets the stage for archi-
tecture to enter into a range of broader socio-
epistemological constructs that follow in and
through its spatial and systematic ones.
Spatial Formations
The Holmes opinion was rendered during
the same period in which the rise of the mass-
es began to be theorized in terms of their spa-
tial, aesthetic, and socio-political implications.
Holmess issuance itself codifies and responds
to the development of the masses within a so-
cio-spatial system. Socio-spatial images appear
in the critical theory discourse of the period,
including Georg Lukascss History and Class
 Nana Last
Consciousness in 1922 and Sigfried Kracauers
coining of the term the mass ornament in his
similarly titled essay of 1927. In The Mass Or-
nament,4 Kracauer focuses on an example of
a synchronized dance group, the Tiller Girls, to
diagnose the import of modernisms developing
spatial formations, specifically emphasizing the
disjunction between spatial formations that the
group produces with their bodies and a lack of
individual subjectivity and agency possessed
by those very same bodies. These products of
American distraction factories are no longer
individual girls, but indissoluble female units
whose movements are mathematical demon-
strations. ... The regularity of their patterns is
acclaimed by the masses who themselves are
arranged row upon ordered row.5
Repeatedly, Kracauer posits that responsi-
bility remains with the viewer noting, nobody
would notice the pattern if the crowd of spec-
tators, who have an aesthetic relation to it and
thresholds 40
do not represent anyone, were not sitting in
front of it.6 Crucial to the efficacy of Kracau-
ers analysis, thus, is the mirroring of the dance
group in the audiences organization into the
row upon ordered row that readily emerges
as the unseenbut not un-theorizedimage
behind Holmess opinion rendered several
years earlier.
Kracauer finds something profoundly in-
human in how human bodies are made into
the geometrical spatial images definitive of the
mass ornament. This discordance between a liv-
ing body and geometric form led him to declare
that the thinking behind the mass ornament
is that of capitalist rationality which subsumes
humans into a formal complex of moving
units. He positions their mass bodily forma-
tions beyond their perception despite their
participation: Even though the masses bring it
about, they do not participate in conceiving the
ornament. ... In this it resembles the aerial pho-
tographs of landscapes and cities for it does not
emerge from the interior of a given reality, but
rather appears above it.7
Diagnosing mass ornament as a spatial
image indicative of the functioning of capitalist
44
society makes apparent the external structuring
of the human and the obliteration of the indi-
vidual under capitalism. Yet left open is
the question of what mechanisms generate
the ordering. This question of the relation be-
tween internal and external structuring recalls
Adam Smiths abiding image of capitalisms
free market optimization. Written in the same
year as the Declaration of Independence,
Adam Smiths Wealth of Nations puts forth
the now-common image of capitalisms
optimal functioning:
[The individual] generally, indeed,
neither intends to promote the
public interest, nor knows how
much he is promoting it. By
preferring the support of domestic
to that of foreign industry, he
intends only his own gain, and
he is in this, as in many other
cases, led by an invisible hand to
promote an end which was no part
of his intention. Nor is it always
the worse for the society that
it was no part of it. By pursuing
his own interest he frequently
promotes that of the society
more effectually than when he
really intends to promote it. 8
Describing a set of emerging relations among
individuals coming into being as discrete capi-
talist agents acting in concert, Smiths notion of
the invisible hand raises fundamental spatial
questions. The invisible, leading hand is a spa-
tial structure that Smith employs to show how
workings of capitalism are organized at once
from without and within. Such ambiguity and
duality is central to flows socio-spatialization.
Although Smith describes the workings of capi-
talism as the product of individual self-organ-
izationsuggestive of flowthat assumption
comes into question as the hand simultaneously
produces and usurps agency. Through such
ambiguous constructs, the question repeatedly
emerges as to what guides and produces flow,
 Flows Socio-spatial Formation
and its relations to space, action, and behavior.
Against modernitys spatial defining of
the masses from without, the opening decades
of the twenty-first century have increasingly
involved the emergence of socio-spatial forma-
tions based on the construct of flow that allow
for an order at once without and within. Most
notable is Michael Hardt and Antoni Negris
construct of multitude, which posits an emerg-
ing form of collectivity in which both groups
and individuals can combine in fluid matri-
ces of resistance that defy the silence of the
masses. Inherent in the distinction between
the masses and multitude is the construct of
agency. The multitude produces flows that do
not demand absolute conformity, but are able
to admit agency. This suggests that fluid con-
structs modulate between individual agency
and absorption into the masses, situating flow
within the realm of spatial politics.
Through the crossing and reconfiguring
of spatial boundaries, flow is able to challenge
both absolute agency and absolute absence
of agency. In response to ambiguity over the
guiding forces of flow, architectural models of
flow regularly fill in this blank with imported
models of growthanimated, environmental,
and informational models that take on the role
of agency even as they seemingly relinquish
it. In an act that reimagines what is internal
or self-produced, practices producing flow
regularly import an outside agency, such as a
scientific model of growth, to act as an internal
guiding force. In so doing, they make the issue
of what guides apparent, even as they work to
smooth over distinctions and spatial divisions.
The resultant smooth surfaces and spatial con-
nections either commute across what had previ-
ously been thought an impassable boundary
or align action, such as circulation, with the
spatial and formal container.
Smooth Functioning
Smooth functioning holds a privileged place
in our society as an unquestionably rational
45
construct. Yet the image of smooth function-
ing is complex. Going with the flow is a form
of smoothing over underlying issues. Smiths
invisible hand is an instance of such a smooth-
ing over of agency and of a plurality of views,
both of which later reemerge in the multitude.
Holmess ruling implies that a socially defined
smooth functioning is upset when the limits
of free speech are surpassed and speech be-
comes action. Flow, while frequently defined
within design as a formal/material process, is
necessarily tied to various social orders. It both
socially and spatially entails an acting in accord
(i.e., an alignment) with spatial containment;
some of these acts manifest and others are
smoothed over or blanketed. While flow is a
method of interaction that produces an inter-
face to tear down conceptual boundaries and
simultaneously reinforces operations of direc-
tionality and alignment, its wider operations
are at times masked by the smoothness of its
own spatial formations and projected associ-
ated behavior.9 Flow, then, cannot be reduced
socio
to a single system, whether that be formal, ma-
terial, or operational. Rather, its coming into
being necessarily entails complex interactions
as those between physical and social models.
Enacting flows formal aspectsalignment or
smoothing overplays a critical role in this
manifestation.
Surfacing through the spatial dichotomies
around flow, then, is the question of formal-
ism, a topic typically associated with aesthetic
practices. Philosophy has frequently assigned
to aesthetic practices a unique, mediating role
between forms of thought and action. In his
4 Sigfried Kracauer, The Mass Ornament, New German
Critique, no. 5 (Spring 1975): 67-76. The opening
ceremonies of the 2008 Beijing Olympics offer an excellent
contemporary example of mass ornament.
5 Ibid., 67.
6 Ibid., 69.
7 Ibid.
8 Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (New York: Bantam Dell,
2003), 572.
9 This recalls psychologys characterization of flow as not just
containing and channeling emotions, but aligning them with
the task at hand.
 Nana Last
History and Class Consciousness,10 for exam-
ple, Georg Lukacs diagnoses a crisis emerging
for Kants philosophical system in its analysis
of the antinomies of pure reason.11 Lukacs
finds that this crisis leads Kant to necessarily
turn, in his Critique of Judgment, to a notably
formalist aesthetics to perfect his system. It is
there that Lukacs sees Kant assign to art the
role of mediator between otherwise irreconcil-
able opposites, something Lukacs believes can
only happen within aesthetics to the extent
that the content itself becomes aesthetic.12
The construct of flow, however, allows oth-
erwise. Flow, in its very smoothness and in
its absorption of dichotomies and conflicting
positions, threatens at one extreme to cover or
smooth over other issues. This potential is not
best dealt with by downplaying flows strong
formal implications, but rather by using its
productive interchanges to rethink formalisms
typically impassable boundaries. This allows
thresholds 40
flow to be poised between what smoothes
over dichotomies, mediums, and other distinc-
tionsyet when its social, cultural, linguistic,
10 Lukacs sees these contradictions arising in modern critical
philosophy beginning with Kant and the attempt to universalize
and compartmentalize the world into a formal system
of rationalism that refuses to accept the world as
something that has arisen (or eg. has been created by God)
independently of the knowing subject and prefers to conceive
of it instead as its own product. Lukacs finds that this
situation alienates subject from object, resulting in a reified
structure of consciousness. Such alienation is nowhere more
apparent for Lukacs than in Kants concept of the thing-in-
itself which is, by definition, unknowable as it lies outside of
the conceptual framework of rational systems. See Georg
Lukacs, Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat
in History and Class Consciousness (Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press, 1990).
11 The antinomies are particularly germane to our discussion as
they include issues of the containment or limits of space; the
limits of causality, order, and freedom; and the question of
the existence of a necessary being or first mover, either in the
world or outside of it. See Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure
Reason (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
12 For Lukacs, Kants realm of the aesthetic ends up only
providing another domain for the capitalist, fragmented self.
See Lukacs, History and Class Consciousness, 140. See also,
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment (Oxford, UK: Oxford
University Press, 2007).
and political aspects are acknowledged, it real-
izes new potentials to interact with the wider
spheres implied by and through its constructs
and operations.
Returning to my original questions, it
becomes increasingly clear that attributes of
flow make it difficult to separate what is flow-
ing from what causes or carries flows as
of necessity, they work together. Yet agency
demands at least a consciousness of those
separations, of those various acting forces and
relations between them, even as they reach a
critical mass to all but subsume agency within
and become a smooth, fluid order. Architec-
tural models of flow can lay that ground as
when, for example, they transfer processes
developed in one material or practice into
another in ways that highlight the questions
of agency and of defining order. It is in this
intermixing that flows socio-spatial formation
can employ processes of inclusion and associa-
tion to articulate a modulating and critical role
for architecture and design in broader socio-
epistemological constructs.13
13 Traditional formalisms institute categorical dismissals that are
not unique to art and architecture, but represent a much wider
social strategy. The constitutional scholar Laurence H. Tribe
has described formal legal decisionssuch as those made
between speech and conductas being regularly employed by
the courts. Such distinctions, Tribe notes, frequently ignore the
actual free speech and property interests involved by invoking
formal distinctions to provide a neutral facade that masks the
issues behind it. This brings us back to the smooth, potentially
neutral facade presented by flow.
Image reproduced by permission from Iwan Baan, Maxxi, Rome, 2010.
Copyright Iwan Baan.
***
Nana Last is Associate Professor at the University of Virginia
School of Architecture where she teaches courses in architecture
theory and design. She received a PhD from MIT and a MArch
from Harvard University. Her research covers contemporary
architecture theory and practice, and their connection to art, phi-
losophy, and cultural studies. She has been published in a num-
ber of anthologies as well as Any, Assemblage, Harvard Design
Magazine, Thresholds, Praxis, Art Journal, and Visual Resources.
Her book Wittgensteins House: Language, Space and Architec-
ture was published in 2008 by Fordham University Press.
46
Collective
Equipments
of Power:
The Road
and
the City

Simone Brott
 Simone Brott
thresholds 40

A meeting of CERFI in 1974. Photograph from Wikimedia Commons by Parislundi, used under CC BY-SA 3.0.
 Collective Equipments of Power
A year ago, I became aware of the
historical existence of the group CERFI
Le centre detudes, de recherches, et de formation
institutionelles, or The Study Center for
Institutional Research and Formation.
CERFI emerged in 1967 under the hand
of Lacanian psychiatrist and Trotskyite
activist Flix Guattari, whose antonymous
journal Recherches chronicled the groups
subversive experiences, experiments, and
government-sponsored urban projects. It was
a singularly bizarre meeting of the French
bureaucracy with militant activist groups, the
French intelligentsia, and architectural and
planning practitioners at the close of the 60s.
Nevertheless, CERFIs analysis of the problems
of society was undertaken precisely from the
perspective of the state, and the Institute
acknowledged a deep complicity between the
intellectual and statesman ... because the first
critics of the State, are officials themselves!1
CERFI developed out of FGERI (The
Federation of Groups for Institutional Study
and Research), started by Guattari two years
earlier. While FGERI was created for the
analysis of mental institutions stemming from
Guattaris work at La Borde, an experimental
psychiatric clinic, CERFI marks the groups
shift toward urbanismto the interrogation
of the city itself. Not only a platform for
radical debate on architecture and the city,
CERFI was a direct agent in the development
of urban planning schemata for new towns
in France.2 CERFIs founding members were
Guattari, the economist and urban theorist
Franois Fourquet, feminist philosopher Liane
Mozre, and urban planner and editor of
Multitides Anne QuerrienGuattaris close
friend and collaborator. The architects Antoine
Grumback, Alain Fabre, Macary, and Janine
Joutel were also members, as well as urbanists
Bruno Fortier, Rainier Hodd, and Christian de
Portzamparc.3
CERFI was the quintessential social
project of post-68 French urbanism. Located
on the Far Left and openly opposed to the
Communist Party, this Trotskyist cooperative
49
was able to achieve what other institutions,
according to Fourquet, with their customary
devicesthe politburo, central committee,
and the basic cellshad failed to do.4 The
decentralized institute recognized that any
formal integration of the group was to sign its
own death warrant; so it embraced a skein of
directors, entangled, forming knots, liquidating
all at once, and spinning in an unknown
direction, stopping short and returning back
to another node. Allergic to the very idea
of party, CERFI was a creative project of
free, hybrid-aesthetic blocs talking and acting
together, whose goal was none other than
the transformation of the libidinal economy
of the militant revolutionary. The group
believed that by recognizing and affirming a
group unconscious, as well as their individual
unconscious desires, they would be able to
avoid the political stalemates and splinter
groups of the traditional Left. CERFI thus
situated itself on the side of psychosisits
confessed goal was to serve rather than repress
socio
the utter madness of the urban malaise,
because it was only from this mad perspective
on the ground that a properly social discourse
on the city could be forged.
1 Franois Fourquet, Laccumulation du pouvoir, Ou le dsir
dtat, Recherches, no. 46 (1982). Translation by the author.
2 Anne Querrien, interview with the author, September 18,
2010; Anne Querrien, Cerfi 1965-1987: Centre Detudes, de
Recherches et de Formation Institutionnelles, Critical Secret.
com, no. 8-9 (2002). Until recently, there was almost no
literature on CERFI apart from the journal Recherches itself
as Anne Querrien revealed, this story is largely oral.
3 Liane Mozre, Foucault et le CERFI: Actualit et
instantans, Le Portique: Revue de philosophie et de
sciences humaines (2004).
4 For the quotations from this paragraph, see Fourquet,
Laccumulation du pouvoir. Translation by the author.
 Simone Brott
Genealogy of Collective
Equipments
In 1972 CERFI held a seminar, Gnalogie
des quipements collectifs: les quipements
du pouvoir, as part of its contract with the
Ministry of Urbanism to investigate urban
questions such as, What is urban? What is
desire in the city? What are power relations
in public services in cities? A transcript of the
intoxicating, four-way discussion between
Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Franois
Fourquet, and Guattari appeared in Recherches
13, and was later published as Equipments
of Power: Towns, Territories and Collective
Equipments.5 Foucault was central to this
little-known, anarchic dialogue which is said
to have directly contributed to the culture of
politique de la ville (urban policy) for deprived
neighborhoods in Paris.6
In this philosophers studio, collective
thresholds 40
equipments is a refrain always on ones mind,
a song which each philosopher sings in a
different key. But more than this, equipments
of power was an important philosophical
model for the city which contributed to the
imaginaire urbaine of France after 68. Of the
four, Foucault is the most lucid. Guattari
and Deleuze contribute their anti-oedipal
concept of the city as a corps-sans-organes
the very year that Anti-Oedipus was published,
giving rise to the enduring model of the decentral-
ized city-state and of postwar capitalism itself.
Fourquet emerges as the outsider.
Deleuze is the first to speak: collective
equipments constitute structures of
investment, structures of public service, and
structures of assistance or pseudo assistance
which antagonistic relationships may obtain.7
The highway, as the equipment of power
par excellence, is an investment structure
that requires police assistance, but that is
policed itself (for Deleuze the pseudo-
assistance of equipment conceals its primary
function of surveillance). Guattari adds
further examples: a thoroughfare, rooms
facing a directors office, the conception of
50
an entranceway, a courtyard. Yet, in and of
itself, there is no such thing as an equipment:
there is a constellation of equipments: just
as, in and of itself, there is no such thing as a
city, but a constellation of cities. Collective
equipments in the plural form, given by
the English translation of Lysa Hochroth,
captures Guattaris and Deleuzes notion
that the city is always multiple; it consists
in aggregate structures such as highways,
schools, and city buildings. But with Guattaris
caveat, an equipment of power is irreducible
to spatialized form. What determines an
equipment of power is the production of
subjectivity obtained, the personologization
of fluxes, or in other words, the production of
subjects under the reign of equipments.
The title Genealogy of Equipments
comes from Foucaults genealogical method,
borrowed from Nietzsche.8 Foucault divorces
himself from Hegels instrumental model that
links historical institutions to an inevitable
metaphysics of progress by refusing to assign
the birth of a thing, a body, or an institution to
its utility, to the fulfillment of a need. Rather,
Foucault believed that an institution is born by
the takeover by force which generated it, the
5 Michel Foucault, Flix Guattari, Gilles Deleuze, and Franois
Fourquet, Equipments of Power: Towns, Territories and
Collective Equipments, in Foucault Live: Michel Foucault
Collected Interviews, 1961-1984, ed. Sylvre Lotringer
and trans. Lysa Hochroth and John Johnston (New York:
Semiotext(e), 1996), 105-12; Lion Murard and Franois
Fourquet, Les quipements du pouvoir, Recherches 13 (1973).
6 See Mozre, Foucault et le CERFI.
7 For the quotations from this paragraph, see Deleuze in Michel
Foucault, Equipments of Power, 105-106.
8 There was also the Geneology Group which included Foucault,
Fourquet, Querrien, Murard, and others. See Friedrich Wilhelm
Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals, trans. Horace Barnett
Samuel (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2003).
 Collective Equipments of Power
takeover by force which breaks with all the
prevailing systems of use up to that point.9
It is by the processes of subjugation that begin
with the christening of a category of rebuts
sociaux (social rejects), or les outsiders
thus separated from a population and from
normative subjectivitythat a city and its
equipments of power take shape.
In Foucaults soliloquy, the road as a
collective equipment of power in extremis
holds urban subjects as prisoners of its
signifying regime, defining who will be legal
and who will be illegal. The first function of
the road, he states, is to ensure a profit or a
surplus of production, which it accomplishes
by staging a dangerous face-off between two
characters. The first of these is the agent
of power, the tax collector, the payment
agent or fiscal agent. Facing him, like an
antithetical character is the bandit, someone
who also subtracts fees, but against the agent
of powerthe looter.10 These are the hostile
subjectivities that populate the road
as equipment.
The second function of the road is to
produce maximum demand in response to
the surplus of production. A road leads to the
bazaar, it begets a market place, it transports
buyers, sellers, and merchandise. All the rules
of sale for Foucault are connected to this
function: the location of sale, the prices of
commodities, and most importantly, what
can be bought and sold. Here again, two
actors face off: on one side the inspector,
the controller, the customs and tollbooth
agent, and on the other side, the smuggler
of contraband goods, the peddler. We could
extend this to the violation of borders in other
equipments, such as the delivery of goods and
persons into or out of a prison or a building,
or across an internationalborder. Evidently,
the figure of the pirate or smuggler is not
marginal but, rather, essential to Foucauldian
equipments. The road emerges as the social
borderline incarnate. What quickly manifests
is that equipments of power can and must be
reversed, and thus activated in this perverse
51
mode that nonetheless sustains equipments.
Obversely, in the case of fiscal disobedience,
tax evasion, or securities fraud, equipments of
power and their codes are hacked by a subject
who is no longer a Foucauldian abnormal, or
accidental outsider, but a willful agent for the
reversal of equipments.
Foucault finishes with the third function
of the road, which is to normalize subjects in
order to control production and demand. The
highway consumes the cars whose production
it ensures and it thereby installs a chain of
stupefied subjects caught in the overall circuit
of production. At one end of the roadway,
there is the engineer from Public Worksa
regulator, agent, and subject of normality,
represented by the engineering schooland
at the other end, the one who is cut off or off-
circuit, either because he is ever on-the-move,
the vagabond who goes nowhere, or because
he is the laggard, immobile in his spot, an
archaic and wild relic predating the roadway:
in both cases, abnormal. Ergo, the road as
socio
equipment divides subjects into normals and
abnormals, instituting the line separating the
human and the nonhuman, which for Foucault
is the real purpose of equipments of power.
The separating line in Foucaults terminology
does not refer to eviction from the roadin
fact, the vagabonds entire existence is given
over to the line. The irony of equipments
of power is that by their very discursive
mechanism, they project what might be called
a posthuman architectural subject, who even
in his or her privative mode wages a vain yet
definitive war against equipments.
9 Mozre, Foucault et le CERFI.
10 For the quotations from this and the subsequent six
paragraphs, see Michel Foucault, Equipments of Power,
106-111.
 Simone Brott
Foucaults statement on the road in
1972, stands in stark contrast to the parallel
American architectural discussion surrounding
the Venturis iconic study of the highway in
Learning from Las Vegas published the same
year. Both texts ostensibly pursue structuralist
semiotics but their methods could not be
more different. While the Venturian highway
parades on the postmodern surface of empty
signifiers (i.e., ducks and billboards), for
Foucault it is the grim subject, rather than
the road, who has to wear the signifying coat.
And while the American rides the highway
in a dream-like, cinematic vessel, locked out
of realitycapitalisms weary spectatorthe
French group-subject is inseparable from
equipments. The contribution of Foucault
and Guattari-Deleuze to this discussion is the
violence and logic of equipments in which
subjects are physically encoded and embedded
within capital itself. Concrete affects and
thresholds 40
corporeal fluxes are the very substance of
Foucauldian equipments and not merely
linguistic signifiers to be decoded by a subject.
Equipments such as the Road turn humans
into code to service (i.e., hold up), and not
merely serve, state capitalism.
Act Two: The City
The second act of Equipments of Power
opens, Is the City a Productive or Anti-
Productive Force? Guattari proffers, the city
is a point in time where there is a density of
equipments ... it is a body-without-organs-
city. At a certain threshold of equipments, the
fluxes, flows of capital, and bodies crystallize
in an economic center (a capital) or a city-
military town, these being the first two
organizing types and purposes of cities. The
city-military town is reached at a threshold of
territoriality wherein equipments are realized;
it is what Guattari calls the reterritorialization
of fluxes in the making of political power. For
Guattari, collective equipments are the social
unconscious of the city.
52
Fourquet, silent until now, says the city
joins all these fluxes, as if it was a film editing
machine, and cuts them and re-cuts them
every which way. In his mind, the function
of collective equipments is to record and
fix, and therefore paralyze the fluxes: There
is no other social machine. In Guattaris
mind, however, only in the despotic city are
equipments anti-productive in an overcoding
that seeks to master or freeze the productive
fluxes. The anti-productive politics of the
despotic city, Guattari adds, soon explode
into a thousand pieces which are productive
entities, collective equipments. Anti-
production, in other words, is still production,
because the reterritorialization of power is
always reversed by these micro-subjectivites
that deterritorialize the center.
Fourquet describes the insatiable hunger
or excess of the despot who measures the
fluxes. ... After the emergence of the city,
we only see the monstrous body of the State
(Egypt, Sumeria) and its military bulimia.
For Guattari, it is indigestion rather than
bulimia: the city is a spatial projection, a
form of reterritorialization, of blockage. The
original despotic city is a military camp where
soldiers are enclosed to prevent the flux of
soldiers from spreading out. As we learn
from Guattari, the city always fights back:
the activated fluxes begin to function, to
turn around. These are collective equipments.
They start working all by themselves. They
disperse and swarm about. The collective
equipment is there to hold something that, by
its very nature, cannot be held. The repressive
regimes which attempt to convert the fluxes
into equipments backfire because under the
despotic rule of subjects, equipments take
revenge on the system, liberating a non-sentient
subjectivity irreducible to the despot, the
socius, the architect, or the philosopherthat
lies in the newly deterritorialized equipments.
Three positions on urban subjectivity can
be identified from this genealogy. For Foucault,
it is a duel between the normative, capitalist
subject who respectively pays or collects
 Collective Equipments of Power
money in relation to an equipment (like
the road), and the vagabond who we might
imagine both sleeps under and has fallen
off the road, thus becoming pathological.
To these we add the smuggler on the wrong
side of the state who is engaged in a daily
code war. For Deleuze and Guattari, urban
subjectivity is a multitude of troops, each
molecule of the army captured within its
military container, its equipment. But at a
certain density of troops, equipments begin
to mobilize against the state, permitting the
fluxes to circulate unobstructed. It is at this
point that a city establishes itself: its citizens
are former troops. For Fourquet, the city-
military town is a carnivorous extension of the
city-state in which equipments are ineluctable,
and the fluxes irretrievable. Deleuzes and
Guattaris alternate vision encapsulates
both these processes in the citys circuitry:
territorializations in the formation of the state,
and deterritorializations by the reversal of flux,
toward a decoded subjectivity.
The End of CERFI
Querrien describes CERFI as having
exploded by the mid-eighties, heralding the
death of the radical micro-institutionand the
end of 68 and its social project as epistme
not only in France, but in North America and
the world over. The span of CERFI coincides
with that of the New York Institute for
Architecture and Urban Studies (IAUS)
both began in 1967 and ended in 1985, and
both were premised on concrete urban and
architectural activism.11 Equipments of
Power, however, never made it across
the Atlantic.
In March of 1982, Skyline, IAUSs
serial, published the landmark interview
of Foucault on architecture and power by
American anthropologist Paul Rabinow.
The role of IAUS in introducing European
theorists and architects to an American
audience is well known, as is the architectural
53
circulation of Foucaults ideas in the North
American academy. The reception of the
concept heterotopia from Des espaces
autres: Htrotopies in 1967, subsequently
analyzed by Georges Teyssot, gave voice to
Foucaults radical philosophy on architecture
and urbanism, and its complicity in the state-
control of subjectivity. Yet the translation
of Foucault via IAUS contributed to the
dominant Italophilic American version of
Foucauldianism, with its connections to the
Venice School of Manfredo Tafuri and the
Italian Marxists. Their efforts to deconstruct
architectural history and its utopian fantasies
were largely sustained by semiotics and
language, as manifested in the pages of IAUSs
journal Oppositions.
Foucault was aware of this dialectic that
his work generates: in the Rabinow/Skyline
interview, he states that in his theory of the
spatialization of knowledge and power,
architecture is not a signifier for power but
the techna set of techniques for practicing
socio
social organization.12 This elaborate
architectural enactment, the betrayal of
Foucaults radical project in the dominant
American reception, not only eclipsed the
French work of CERFI, but also the other
lesser-known Italian Autonomia movement.
In Italy, Foucault, Deleuze, and Guattari
were developing the idea of architecture as
equipment and substituting the prevailing
postmodernist discourse of architecture as
the space of representation with agencements
collectifcollective arrangements or machines
for the creative generation of subjectivity.13
11 Nevertheless, they were still very different institutions.
For more on IAUS, see Sylvia Lavin, IAUS: Institute for
Architecture and Urban Studies, Log, no. 12/13 (Fall 2008):
154-58.
12 Michel Foucault and Paul Rabinow, Space, Knowledge, and
Power, trans. Christian Hubert, Skyline (March 1982).
13 For a history of Autonomia, see Simone Brott, Deleuze and
the Intercessors, Log, no. 19, (Winter 2010).
 Simone Brott

The question is as relevant now as it was

twenty years ago with the contemporary
evacuation of the question of subjectivity.
The hegemony of digital formalisms, and the
neo-Darwinian, architectural strains based on
Deleuze emptied of the subject makes all the
more pressing the enterprise of architectural
subjectivization begun by Foucault. If the
iconic project of the last ten years is a mirror
for the dominant subjectivities of twenty-first-
century capitalism, on the other side of the
mirror are nonhuman equipments of urban
surveillance, incarceration, and biological
control, whose sinister genealogy is not only
the military takeover of cities and civilian
life, but the terrifying Deleuzo-Guattarian
agencies of the equipments themselves as
they self-actuate, propelled, like a selfish
gene. Under the thrall of liberalism now and
in the haze of a resurgent modernism, violent
urbanism and its equipments thrive.
thresholds 40

***
Simone Brott lectures in architecture at Queensland University
of Technology. She completed a Masters in the History, Theory
and Criticism of Architecture and Urbanism at Yale and a PhD
on Architecture and Deleuze at The University of Melbourne.
She has written for Log and her book Architecture for a Free
Subjectivity was released in 2011.

54
 Collective
Form:
The Status
of Public
Architecture
Dana Cuff
 Dana Cuff
When the courthouse square
disappears, I dont see how the
res publica can survive.
Colin Rowe
In 1955, Colin Rowe and John Hejduk
ventured out of Austin, Texas, traveling 30
miles south to the town of Lockhart. There,
they found a form of public architecture
that today seems touchingly nostalgic. In
Architectural Record two years later, they
described an unpretentious yet formally
distinct courthouse, library, and prison aligned
to create a civic realm that was markedly
if modestlyaspiring to be more urbane.
Together, the public buildings, the courthouse
square, main street, and small town grid
offered a diagrammatic coherence to
the town.1
Something about the scale of these
turn-of-the-century buildings, miniaturized
versions of their precedents, was worthy of
thresholds 40
remark by Rowe and Hejduk. Collections
of similarly small artifacts created civic
enclaves in courthouse-square towns across
Texas. Here it is the law which assumes
a public significance; and it is around the
secular image of the law, like architectural
illustrations of a political principle, that these
towns revolve. In each case, the courthouse
is both visual focus and social guarantee;
and in each square the reality of government
made formally explicit provides the continuing
assurance of order.2 It was as much the
hubris as the everydayness of small-town
America that struck Rowe, asserting a res
publica, or public sphere, from the vast
landscape of Texas by deploying a smatter-
ing of little buildings over the street grid.
But where is the res publica outside
of Lockhart, in towns without courthouse
or square? New Urbanists have tried to
replicate such formal fashionings, but the
results are less public and more pretentious.
The argument forwarded here regards
public architecture as an unstable and
thus ambiguous construct. Over the last
half century, coincident with postwar urban
dispersal, the public has been reformulated
as varied communities. Counter to romantic
ideals and common wisdom, communities
particularly those located in suburbs
undermine anything resembling a coherent,
cosmopolitan expression of collective
identity. In contrast to these fragmented, local
associations, designers must now try to wring
a form of public architecture from those lowly
infrastructures that transcend the local
sewers, storm water channels, power grids,
highways, and rail lines.
Expressing Collective
Identity
Typically, three criteria qualify a thing
as public: use, access, and identity. The
democratic dimension of public space,
embodied by its use and accessibility, is
intrinsic to its definition. These two criteria
reflect important socio-political concerns
that have been relatively well studied.3 The
question of identity is more complex, bearing
directly on architecture and the thingness
embedded in the res publica. As Bruno Latour
notes, even the thinkers most occupied by
questions about the public offer little help:
Its not unfair to say that political philosophy
has often been the victim of a strong object-
avoidance tendency. From Hobbes to Rawls,
from Rousseau to Habermas, ... their res
publica does not seem to be loaded with
too many things.4 Any notion of public
architecture concerns things, or built
forms, which symbolize entities that can be
describedsuch as the national identity
that capitol buildings exudebut also those
that cannot. The public itself is a phantasm,
an ideological and historical imaginary that
1 Epigraph, Colin Rowe as interviewed by Richard Ingersoll
in 1989; republished in Colin Rowe and Alexander
Caragonne, As I Was Saying (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
1996), 3:326.
2 Rowe, As I Was Saying, 1:57.
3 See, for example, Evan McKenzie, Privatopia (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1994); Setha Low, Behind the Gates
(New York: Routledge, 2003); and Anastasia Loukaitou-
Sideris and Tridib Banerjee, Urban Design Downtown
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998).
4 Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel, From Realpolitik to
Dingpolitik, or How to Make Things Public, in Making
Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy (Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press, 2005), 16-17.
56
 Collective Form
shifts imperceptibly, thus complicating an
aesthetics of the collective, or how we
present ourselves to ourselves. At stake for
architects is their very history, since public
and institutional structures are the building
types that advance both the discipline and
individual careers.
In terms of collective identity, Rowe and
Hejduk promoted a well-established political
notion of public space. With the courthouse
and the prison as urban anchors, a social
and spatial construction of justice is manifest.
The godfather of this perspective is Jrgen
Habermas, whose model of the public sphere
depends upon political debate in the open, as
if situated in some hybrid between a Roman
forum and a Parisian caf. In this view, the
crux of our collective sphere is the sociology
of difference and when located in public
space, we confront others unlike ourselves.
Only then do tolerance, collective identity,
shared values, and social norms evolve.
Marxists like Lefebvre describe a related
right to the city, while Dutch urbanists Hajer
and Reijndorp call for urban cultural friction.5
But since when might we imagine that face-to-
face political debate is our collective medium?
This theoretical view has outlasted our
spatial realities.
It also begs economic reality. As Sarah
Whiting argues, Lament-drenched, post-
lapsarian narratives about a lost public
sphere ... invariably feed futile retrieve and
recover missions that share success/failure
rates with other contemporary missions based
on myths. The public sphere in the US has,
from its inception, been tied as much, if not
more, to business than to its presumptive
origin in government or some variant of
public organisation.6 The privatized public
sphere to which Whiting alludes was made
up of the kind of places that Fredric Jameson
and Mike Davis loved to hate in the 80s and
90s.7 Postmodern spaces of consumption
preoccupied debates about the decline of
the public sphere. Non-place arguments by
people like Marc Auge, the broadly adopted
but uninspired transit-oriented district, the
international McDonaldization of places, and
the global competition among cities have
grown more widely recognized as dead-end
57
forms of public architecture.8 These models
that sought to reformulate both an idea of the
public and the space it would inhabit have
already been reconstructed in virtual and
post-human terms that abandon physical
space given the prevalence of social media
and the imminent internet of things. There,
material space is displaced by accessibility,
speed, convenience, customizable information
sources, and new forms of intimacy. The
material place of common ground in turn has
relocated to the networks of efficiency and
utility: public infrastructure.
Physical infrastructure is a victim of
the present economic conditions from
Europe to North America, characterized by
an impoverished public sector at federal,
provincial, and municipal levels. Construction
in the US is a complex indicator of economic
health but also of the nations physical
condition. Thus, while recent increases
in construction spending are primarily
infrastructure-related, private construction
spending for non-residential construction
socio
is down almost 40% below its peak in 2008,
and residential construction is down 65%
since its peak in 2006.9 The most recent
class of state governors claimed austerity
as their watchword. All this suggests that
the foreseeable future includes little public
architecture in the traditional, if idealized,
sense. Today pure public spaces like
plazas and parks are likely to be historical
5 Jrgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the
Public Sphere, trans. Thomas Burger (Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press, 1991); Henri Lefebvre, Writings on Cities, trans.
Eleonore Kofman and Elizabeth Lebas (Oxford: Blackwell,
1996); Maartin Hajer and Arnold Reijndorp, In Search of
New Public Domain (Rotterdam: NAi Publishers, 2001).
6 Rafi Segal and Els Verbakel with Stan Allen, Marcel Smets,
Sarah Whiting, and Margaret Crawford, Architecture and
Dispersal, in Cities of Dispersal, ed. Rafi Segal and Els
Verbakel, Architectural Design 78, no. 1 (January/February
2008): 102-107.
7 See, for example, the 1980s New Left Review debate about
postmodernism between Jameson and Davis using the
Bonaventure Hotel atrium as their case in point: Fredric
Jameson, Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late
Capitalism, New Left Review, no. 146 (July-August 1984):
53-92; Mike Davis, Urban Renaissance and the Spirit of
Postmodernism, New Left Review, no. 151 (May-June
1985): 106-113.
8 Marc Auge, Non-places: Introduction to an Anthropology
of Supermodernity (London: Verso, 1995).
9 See http://www.census.gov/construction/c30/c30index.html.
 Dana Cuff
thresholds 40

Scenario 1: D
 isneyrail, a networked system of five park-development interventions along the High Speed
Rail, including one at the Angel Stadium. Courtesy of cityLAB-UCLA.

58
 Collective Form
artifacts from an earlier century. Similarly,
the dignity of public buildings that were built
with significant investment contrasts with the
anonymous, leased space that government
offices now occupy. The retronym public
park is necessary since new open space
is likely to be provided as an amenity within
private enclaves, whether at an open air
shopping mall or new housing development.
Mid-Century Mutations
In 1955 when Rowe and Hejduk worried
about the disappearance of the courthouse
square, it was actually already gone, an
artifact of an earlier era. In small towns across
the US, however, broadly scattered rural
and vaguely urban populations still contain
common ground. The space of collectivity is
visible wherever we find what Albert Pope
calls the city of form, the gridiron urbanism
of the nineteenth century that carved out
blocks for squares, courthouses, and civic
centers.10 Where the Texas Rangers concern
would have been warranted was in the
cotemporaneous postwar explosion of the
suburbs. Outside Austin and other cities
across the country, the new city of dispersal
had taken root.
Indeed, in the expanding postwar
suburbanity, the courthouse square had
already disappeared. In the early suburbs
of the late 30s and 40s, collections of
land, houses, and residents were built on
greenfields, with few architectural illustrations
of collective aspiration. Instead, the individual
house was made formally explicit. In these
early, postwar residential developments,
Habermasian public space devolved into
a more local, less formal community center,
strip development, or neighborhood primary
school. Consider two of the very first modern
10 Albert Pope, From Form to Space, in Fast Forward
Urbanism, ed. Dana Cuff and Roger Sherman (New
York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2011), 143-175.
11 Dana Cuff, Enduring Proximity: The Figure of the
Neighbor in Suburban America, Journal of Postmodern
Culture 15, no. 2 (2005).
59
suburbs, one from each coast: At both
Levittown on Long Island and Westchester
in Los Angeles, forms of community fore-
shadowed the fragmentation of the public,
however idealized. While the focus was fixed
on the single-family house, a new idea about
the collective was shaping up in peripheral view.
The early history of Levittown captures
how the public was changing in the suburban
context. First, in Levittowns initial phases
between 1947 and 1951, the only private
space was inside the house. Residents were
not allowed to fence their yards to permit
the Levitts oversight of deviant practices
that they feared former slum and apartment
dwellers might bring. Among those fearful
behaviors, nothing was more emblematic than
drying laundry. In fact, although laundry blew
intimately in the breeze during the week, as
soon as the men came home from work Friday
evening, women had to bring it inside. Played
up as the space of private life, the Ur-form
of single-family dwellings actually involved a
notion of neighborly surveillance. Collective
socio
lives depended upon each neighbor acting as
a block warden to guard against misbehavior.11
At Levittown, the public underwent
a subtle shift from its cosmopolitan
predecessor to the neighbor, an intimate
social and geographic construct. Rather
than a hierarchical public institution situated
as a spatial hub, Levittown was organized
around multiple community centers. In
Levittowns and their equivalents across the
US, there would never again be a Lockhart
courthouse square or a San Francisco Union
Square. Instead, there would be a rec-
center, a church or two, and an elementary
school. These formed the new collectivity,
with local audiences that were far more
homogeneous than the term public implied
with its liberating anonymity coupled to civic
responsibility. At Levittown, the town breaks
down into communities; the architecture of
the collective is rooted in local services; the
shared landscape is surveilled, pushing
everyday life to the interior. And just in case
the interior becomes too remote, the picture
window allows the gaze from and to the street.
In this landscape, the terms public and
private are no longer legitimate.
 Dana Cuff
This new postwar order, a collective
identity rather than Habermasian citizenship,
evolved even further on the other side of
the nation. Slightly earlier than Levittown,
a more commercial form of suburb was
taking shape in Westchester at the hands
of Southern Californias homebuilders. No
land was set aside because it was all real
estate and thus all for sale. The dominance
of the automobile brought not only sprawl,
as is widely understood, but also the
further individuation of the landscape itself:
even movement through it, particularly in
comparison to mass transit, was the purview
of the individual. The formal patterns at
Levittown and Westchester differ enough to
see this mutation. At Westchester, boulevards
defined groups of houses that turned their
backs to the wider world, facing a labyrinth of
local streets. Public and private are replaced
by regional and local, and the infrastructure of
streets becomes the physical material worthy
of government funding and representative of
thresholds 40
the collective.12
Westchester is an early exemplar of
another significant development in the
collective landscape: Lockharts courthouse-
prison-square and Levittowns community
centers are supplanted by a retail strip.
Physically organized like everything else in
Westchesterthat is, by principles of traffic
managementthe shopping district sits
between the superblocks. Within this diagram,
towns that had citizens and publics are
transformed into communities of neighbors
and consumers. The fundamental segregation
of the suburban landscape is etched into
an economic maxim: those who can shop
together, live together. Because of the strong
ties between race and socioeconomic status,
spatial segregation was mapped neatly by
racial differences.13
By the mid-fifties, in both Levittown and
Westchester, the suburban landscape was
characterized not by public and private, but by
localities sharing grocery stores and schools.
There was, however, a larger sphere of things
the collective shared: a utilitarian backdrop
of streets, sewers, power lines, phone lines,
and storm water systems. Yet when the
common ground is rendered as infrastructure,
communities are left with an identity crisis:
infrastructure is variously buried, invisible,
at the margins, or ill-attended. The street
may be the clearest exception. Where the
house is the symbol of self, the street is the
figure of the neighborhood. Occasionally,
as with a cul-de-sac, the street can provide
symbolic identity, but more often the road,
street, and highway function as mere service
connectors. In the 60s and 70s, this tacit and
troubling collective locus triggered studies
like Bernard Rudofskys Streets for People,
Donald Appleyards Livable Streets, and Jane
Jacobss manifesto to reclaim the prewar citys
streets and sidewalks for the neighborhood.
But none of these authors took on the tougher
and more prevalent condition; none cruised
the streets of sprawl where cars dominated.
Stepping back from Levittown and
Westchester, three interrelated postwar
trends have been alluded to that influence
a contemporary notion of the public with
regard to architecture and urbanism. The first
is a change in subjectivity, captured by the
citizens transformation into the consumer;
the second is a change in scale, by the
contraction of the civic into the local or the
city into the neighborhood; and the third is
a change in form, with the shift from a city of
form into a city of space.14 Each of these and
their corollaries have profound effects on
public architecture.
Citizens qua Consumers
Economists, sociologists, and cultural
critics locate the onset of consumer society
at the end of WWII. When market demand is
viewed as voting-by-pocketbook, commercial
success is a new measure of democracy. This
12 The Westchester research is documented in Dana Cuff,
The Provisional City (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000).
13 Early legislation against segregation was enacted in 1948
when the Supreme Court ruled against racially restrictive
housing covenants, and more followed, but according
to Massey and Denton, it was no more effective. See
Douglas S. Massey and Nancy A. Denton, American
Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), 186.
14 Pope, From Form to Space, 143-175.
60
 Collective Form

socio

Scenario 2: T
 rain to Training, linking the largest network of US Olympic training facilities with the High Speed Rail.
Courtesy of cityLAB-UCLA.

61
 Dana Cuff
public is no longer a collective citizenry but,
instead, independent consumers aggregated
into market sectors by their consumption
choices. While it is often assumed that these
trends mark the rise of the individual, they
may also be viewed more fatally, as the death
of the subject.15
For architecture, the expanding consumer
culture produced well-known changes in
the material environment, some of which
by now are clich: shopping malls are
the new collective arena; architecture is
complicit in the production of desire; and
disinvestment killed the traditional public
sphere. In addition, when architectures
clients, occupants, and owners self-identify as
consumers, they seek speculative, short-term
economic value over other objectives such
as programmatic fit, symbolic expression,
or durability. When economic logics of
expediency and efficiency prevail, individual
projects and even clients are less important
than effective management.16
thresholds 40
Under these circumstances, what
becomes of the public building that defined
the urban collective and drove the discipline
of architecture? Of course, there are still
city halls, parks, courthouses, libraries, and
schools, and these continue to materially
render what we share. Today, these buildings
are portraits of efficiency and utility, dressed
in an aesthetic that could be called thrift-
washing, a thin coat of architecture that
expresses a priority on economizing, whether
or not the building is actually cost-effective.17
Scaling Back: Civic to Local
At the same time that citizens mutated
into consumers, the conceptual scope of
the public scaled down from a civic ideal
to something much more geographically
local. As Levittown and Westchester
demonstrate, when the city fragments
into clusters of neighborhoods, the public
becomes a community. The latter is used for
collectivities of every stripefrom interest
groups (the animal rights community) and
demographics (the elderly community) to
spatially coherent clusters (the Ocean Park
62
community). Since Toquevilles nineteenth-
century characterization of American
communitarianism, the force of the local has
been strong. But when social policy scholars
like Robert Putnam argue that community
bonds or generalized reciprocity have
weakened in recent decades, the difference
between civic and communitarian is elided.18
The history of this distinction is apparent in
the history of public building.
The role of public architecture has
been debated since the origins of the
architecture profession in America. A formal
notion of public space reached its apex in
the US during the City Beautiful movement,
retreating to our present ideas about the
death of the public sphere. In the same
year as the Chicago Worlds Fair of 1893,
the young American Institute of Architects
successfully argued for federal regulations
concerning public architecture, particularly
that commissions for the design of federal
buildings be decided by competition.
Since neither landscape architecture nor
urban planning existed as professions at
the time, architecture willfully shaped its
own conception of public space and public
design. From the mid-1800s to the early 1900s,
men with no formal training in architecture
designed the public realm: Fredrick Law
Olmsted and Calvert Vaux made urban open
15 Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism and Consumer Society,
in Postmodern Culture, ed. Hal Foster (London: Pluto Press,
1985), 111-125.
16 One consequence is the creation of gigantic multi-service
operations like AECOM and Stantec. These mega-firms
gain experience by purchasing specialty firms in
different locales, aggregating a resume that can fit target
commissions.
17 Thrift-washing is a play on white-washing and green-
washing in which environmental concerns are symbolic
and expressive rather than substantive. This is not a
new phenomenon: when the first public housing act in
1937 authorized construction of subsidized apartments, it
steered far from any sign of luxury. Closets went without
doors, interior plumbing was left exposed, and finishes
were minimal. Such details symbolized that public housing
was not meant to be permanent or even well-liked; it would
satisfy as a form of existenzminimum until the occupants
could pay their own rent elsewhere.
18 Generalized reciprocity refers to the practice of helping
others with no expectation of gain. See Robert D. Putnam,
Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American
Community (New York: Simon & Shuster, 2001), 505.
 Collective Form
space; Haussmann in Paris or Ebenezer
Howard in England laid out streets and urban
plans. In 1897, AIA President George B. Post
recommended broadening the professions
agenda to focus on public architecture
and urban planning.19 The design of the
broader cityits public space, streets, and
buildingswas to belong to the architect.
With the Chicagos World Fair, architects like
Daniel Burnham sought to turn the city into
an aesthetic project. What distinguishes this
initiative is its focus on the whole rather than
the fragment or component.
The courthouse, whether it is in Lockhart
or Chicago, is a symbol of society at large
whereas the school is a symbol of the
neighborhood.20 The postwar surge in school
construction coincides with what I suggest is
the postwar scaling back of collective identity,
when the modifier neighborhood displaces
public, as in neighborhood park. Thus,
as cities with citizens are fragmented into
communities, public buildings shift from those
that are typically found downtown to those
like schoolsfound in the suburbs.
From Order to Expanse
Lastly, changes in city form parallel the
dynamic notion of publicness. The order
of the nineteenth-century city, the gridiron,
set a formal pattern for urban activity and
development. While the grid itself is without
hierarchy, the built and open spaces that filled
the grid established a continuity of centers,
districts, relational distances, and facade
19 Mary Woods, From Craft to Profession (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1999), 43.
20 Putnam documents that the percentage of parents joining
the PTA doubled between 1945 and 1960, followed by
an equally steep decline thereafter. This is consistent
with a decline in active involvement in all sorts of local
organizations in the last decades of the 20th century. See
Putnam, Bowling Alone, 56-62. Similarly, over half of all
schools are now more than fifty years old, suggesting that
the majority of these schools were built in the 40s60s.
See Thomas D. Snyder and Charlene M. Hoffman, The
Digest of Education Statistics (Washington DC: National
Center for Education Statistics, 2001).
21 Cathleen McGuigan, Starchitecture: A Modest Proposal,
Newsweek, June 10, 2010.
63
orientations. By contrast, postwar suburban
growth evidenced no such order but was,
instead, a horizontal expanse for speculation.
Infrastructural linkages between tracts
comprised utilities, roadways, and commercial
strips, representing the minimal connections
between them. While architectural notions
of urban dispersal were formalized, as in
Wrights Broadacre or Saarinens organic
decentralization, neither architects nor
planners had enough power to redirect
the interests of the real estate industry. In
the purest casesPhoenix, Houston, or
Los Angelesthe postwar housing boom
produced an urban agglomeration that had
neither center nor edge. Leap-frogging across
farmland and pushed up against the limits of
topography, the population fled the city and
abandoned the res publica. The dispersed
residential landscape left no room for the
visible public.
Unsurprisingly, the increased dispersal of
cities into their hinterlands parallels the rise of
neighborhood associations. As cities grow to
socio
scales beyond geographic manageability, and
areas within cities come to see themselves in
competition with other areas, the public in the
public good shrinks to fit. Not-in-my-backyard
is a euphemism for a contemporary version of
civic interest, highly local and reactionary.
While a lingering ideal of the public
can be discerned in architectural and urban
studies writing, the changes above are part
of a continuous evolution that was particularly
marked in the mid-twentieth century. The
public is a historically specific construct that
can be monitored in the material culture of our
environmentour public architecture.
Res Publica Reboot
The trophy building is so over.
Welcome to the era of design
on a diet. 21
In June 2010, Newsweek proclaimed
that the exuberance of the previous eras
architecture had met the recession and
was chastened. Compared to the private
 Dana Cuff
thresholds 40

Scenario 3: P
 ark, Shop N Ride, solving parking requirements through the opportunistic use of neighboring vacant land
and development opportunities in Orange. Courtesy of cityLAB-UCLA.

64
 Collective Form
sectors trophy building, public buildings
had been quieted far sooner. In 2010, the
federal government was funding courthouse
and border station construction, but little
else. Public funding of design is increasingly
miserly, demonstrated by a scaling back of
the GSA design excellence program. While
it is unquestionably important to continue to
advocate for the strong design of our public
buildings, there is a revanchist ring to that
cause. With few private and governmental
architectural opportunities available, what
possibilities remain for a contemporary public
architecture in the material world and where
are the most interesting design opport-
unities located?
The most provocative site to construct a
contemporary public and its architecture is all
around us if we remember that the res publica,
beyond the dome and the square, contains the
street. Infrastructural space is the terrain
vague where design may opportunistically
reengage the collective. There are signs of
design attention to infrastructure, including
the broad, enthusiastic response to cityLAB-
UCLAs ideas competition, WPA 2.0: Working
Public Architecture (2009), and to the Van Alen
Institutes initiative, Life at the Speed of Rail
(2011). Both competitions asked architects
to bring focus on that which had rested in
their peripheral vision: the networks of utility
and mobility.22
With transit and infrastructure spending
that exceeds other publicly funded efforts,
architects and urbanists are clamoring
to be involved. The funds authorized by
the American Recovery and Reinvestment
Act of 2009 included some $150 billion for
infrastructure-related construction. The ARRA
appropriation resembled Works Progress
Administration spending at the end of the
Great Depression, with one primary caveat:
while both funding programs expressly
prioritized jobs, WPA projects were expected
to contribute to the federal governments
built legacy. Designers and communities will
need to insist that ARRA spending bring an
aesthetic other than thrift if projects from the
Bay Bridge in California to the Denali National
Park facilities in Alaska are to express shared
values other than economy.
65
The potential to create new identities
for localities is visible in New York, where
bike lanes as well as impromptu and more
permanent seating areas have been wrung
from the city streets. Named New York Citys
Transportation Commissioner in 2007, Janette
Sadik-Khan stated We are looking at our
streets differently, and treating them as the
valuable public spaces that they are. With
6,000 miles of streets, thats a lot of real estate
to work with.23 Projects like these that re-
imagine service networks as amenities are
not without controversy. To be implemented,
they require tactics that vary from those
common to architecture: infrastructure sites
have indefinite boundaries; the time frame
is mercurial; master plans or end-states are
inadequate; hybrid programs can be invented.
Perhaps most importantly, the infrastructural
intervention is conceived as a catalyst for
further economic and urban development. The
designer needs to think through the possible
scenarios, with contingencies in mind.
One of the best test sites for this way
socio
of working will be the proposed national
high speed rail network, the largest public
infrastructure investment since the Interstate
Highway system. Although station design
is the standard architectural component
of this new infrastructure, our research at
cityLAB-UCLA suggests that neither station
design nor station-area design will produce
urban consequences. The build it and they
will come model has not worked along
other rail lines.24 Based on the experience in
22 The concept of terrain vague is discussed in Ignasi de
Sol-Morales, Terrain Vague, in Anyplace, ed. Cynthia
C. Davidson (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995), 118-123.
The WPA 2.0 competition is discussed in Dana Cuff,
WPA 2.0: Working Public Architecture, Harvard Design
Magazine, no. 33 (Fall/Winter 2010): 36-44. See http://www.
vanalen.org/lasr/ for more information on the Van Alen
Institute initiative.
23 Sarah Goodyear, Taming the Mean Streets, Grist,
December 21, 2010, http://www.grist.org/article/2010-12-
21-Taming-the-mean-streets-of-new-york-a-talk-with-nyc-
dot.
24 For example, twenty years after the construction of BART
in northern California, the expected development around
stations has not occurred. See Robert Cervero, Rail
Transit and Joint Development: Land Market Impacts in
Washington, D.C. and Atlanta, Journal of the American
Planning Association 60, no. 1 (1993): 83-90.
 Dana Cuff

other countries with high speed rail, we are
exploring scenario planning that identifies
local potential capable of tipping the scales
of urban design toward particular solutions.
In the examples shown here FIGS. 1, 2, and 3, the
Anaheim station area is imagined according
to three unique catalysts: the need for parking,
the expansion of the citys sports facilities,
and a new transit connection between the
rail station and Disneyland. The design of
staged interventions foreshadows subsequent
components, taking into consideration economic,
programmatic, and policy drivers. Each
scenario leverages a res publica from two
sources: the initial public investment in infra-
structure, and the subsequent growth it sparks.
thresholds 40
The potential of a systemic intervention
like high speed rail will only be realized if
architects and urban designers work in more
opportunistic and strategic ways. This holds
whenever infrastructure is the starting point
of public architecture. The zones of storm
water, power, and circulation have resisted
design attention, but as experiments take
place in cities across the country, it grows
easier to understand how this form of res
publica can take shape. After all, there was a
Main Street between the courthouse and the
prison in Lockhart. Now that the infrastructural
interstices have captured our concentrated
focus, we need to demonstrate that we can
make something of them.

***
Dana Cuff is Professor of Architecture, Urban Design and
Urban Planning at UCLA where she is also director of cityLAB,
an urban design and research think tank. Her work focuses
on affordable housing, modernism, suburban studies, the
politics of place, and the spatial implications of new computer
technologies. Cuffs research on postwar urbanism was
published in a book titled The Provisional City (MIT Press,
2000), and she recently edited Fast Forward Urbanism with
Roger Sherman (Princeton Architectural Press, 2011). Since
founding cityLAB in 2006, she has concentrated her efforts
around issues of the emerging metropolis.

66
Tuktoyaktuk:
Offshore Oil
and a New
Arctic
Urbanism
Pamela Ritchot

FIG. 1 Tuktoyaktuk at the gateway to
the Canadian Arctic. Courtesy
of author.
thresholds 40
Pamela Ritchot
In 2008, the Canadian Government accepted BPs $1.18
billion bid for the largest block of offshore oil exploration
licenses in the Beaufort Sea. As climate change continues to
lengthen the ice-free open water season, oil companies like BP,
Exxon Mobil, and Imperial Oil have gained access to previously
inaccessible Arctic waters, finding lucrative incentive to expand
offshore drilling in its remote territories. Thus the riches of the
Canadian Arctic are heightening its status as a highly complex
territory of global concern at the nexus of several overlapping
geopolitical, environmental, and economic crises, and are
placing the construction of its landscape under the auspices
of offshore oil development. At the edge of the Beaufort Sea,
the hamlet of Tuktoyaktuk is geographically positioned as the
gateway to these riches, and politically positioned to face this
unique confluence occurring across four streams of issues: first,
the global crisis of climate change as it rapidly reshapes a once-
frozen landscape; second, the massive development potential
under oil and gas exploration that is only possible through big
industry; third, the history of cultural and geopolitical struggle
of the indigenous Inuvialuit people; and fourth, the wielding of
national sovereignty through aggressive federal plans for Arctic
development FIG. 1 . By maximizing the development potential
of each issue, and mitigating their possible harmful effects in
this fragile context, the various players in this confluence can
position Canadas Arctic territory for a future of urban and
architectural opportunity.
Typically imagined as a land of eternal ice, an impermeable
frozen landmass nine times the size of California and bounded
by the sea, the Arctic coast is actually experiencing some
of the most significant effects of climate change. While
Tuks economic and physical challenges already make it a
sort of Arctic slum in terms of the conditions of its built
infrastructure, by 2050 the situation will worsen as significant
permafrost melt will succumb nearly 61% of its remaining
karst landmass to inundation FIG. 2 . Concurrently, the increasing
volatility of a rapidly rising sea is significantly eroding Tuk
from its edges. The destruction of the land also threatens the
Inuvialuits access to the complex ecologies to which their
subsistence economy and recreational livelihoods remain
vitally linked. As the Canadian Arctic declines at the hands
of a climatic crisis, it must seek radical architectural and
infrastructural intervention to defend its ecologies and to
reconstruct its landscape.
As global hydrocarbon discoveries are beyond their peak
and current production accounts for only half of consumption
worldwide, oil exploration has expanded into the deepwater
reserves beneath the rapidly diminishing armor of the Arctic
68
 Tuktoyaktuk

1
According to the USGS, the Arctic Circle
holds an estimated 90 billion barrels of
undiscovered, technically recoverable oil
and 1,670 TCF of natural gas. This is about
13% of the worlds undiscovered oil, 30%
of the undiscovered natural gas, and 20%
of the undiscovered natural gas liquids. See
http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.
asp?ID=1980.
2
As the 1970s OPEC oil crisis dropped the
price of oil to $9.60 per barrel in 1986,
southern oil investors ended their costly,
non-conventional endeavors and companies
including Dome Petroleum and Gulf Canada
went out of business, folding their Arctic
pursuits in the Beaufort Sea in 1988.

socio
FIG. 2 P
 rojections of Tuktoyaktyk in 2050 without and with infrastructure to
protect against sea level rise. Courtesy of author.

icecap. As Canadas Beaufort-Mackenzie Basin holds the largest

oil reserve north of 60, the race for icebound oil will focus
on the coastal communities of which Tuktoyaktuk is the most
prominent.1 As the number of exploration licenses in the
basin increase, the community of Tuk can draw upon recent
memory to intuit the threat of unfettered oil development
and its subsequent economic and infrastructural desertion.
At their extreme, these boom-bust cycles typically exploit
a communitys minimal onshore resources and geographic
position to bolster a period of productivity that quickly dies
as industrial operations close. In the 1970s and 80s, the oil
industrys rapid development, exploitation, and eventual retreat
expanded Tuktoyaktuk, only to desert the community when
the economic viability of offshore development fell Fig. 3 .2
The economic, ecological, and territorial damage wreaked

69
 Pamela Ritchot
thresholds 40

FIG. 3 The urban corpse of previously abandoned 70s-era oil infrastructure in

Tuktoyaktuk. Courtesy of author.

70
 Tuktoyaktuk

by this phase of development mobilized the ratifying of the 3

Signed by both the Inuvialuit and the
Inuvialuit Final Agreement (IFA) in 1984, which defined the Canadian government, the goals of the IFA

local Inuvialuit land claims and strengthened their control over were to preserve the Inuvialuit cultural
identity and values within a changing
natural resources.3 This forthcoming era of Arctic urbanism will Northern society and enable the equal

thus be a litmus test for decades-old policies, as they empower
the Inuvialuit to control the infrastructural development on
their land while strategizing Tuks long-term, post-oil growth.
As the owners and operators of the land within the
participation of the Inuvialuit in the northern
and national economy and society that
was taking shape. See Zoe Ho et al., eds.,
Inuvialuit Final Agreement: Celebrating
25 Years (Inuvik, NT: Inuvialuit Regional
Corporation, 2009), 23.

Inuvialuit Settlement Region, the Inuvialuit have the opportunity 4

In his 2010 Speech from the Throne, Prime
to lead the future exploration agreements that will determine Minister Stephen Harper identified various

whether these reserves will in fact be tapped, and how territorial, research, and development
projectssuch as a high Arctic research
both offshore exploration and onshore production will take stationto exert Arctic sovereignty under its

shape. This empowerment thus affords them potential for Northern Strategy. Harper also highlighted
oil exploration as a crucial opportunity for
real partnership with the oil companies as both parties will northern development.

negotiate the provisions of development. As the entropic

Arctic landscape slips out from under its communities, these
partnerships help to establish the defensive infrastructure
needed to stabilize the Inuvialuits coastal community.
Moreover, as infrastructural development is vitally linked to
a regions economic progress, ensuring that industry develops
flexible infrastructure could provide their coastal economy
with the necessary foundations upon which to transition
from one that is oil-dependent to a post-oil one with a secure

socio
position in the global economy.

 As long ago the Mediterranean was the

most important Sea in the world because the
ruling nationsRome, Carthage and Egypt
were on its shores, so today the Polar Sea
is gaining importance because the three big
powers of the worldCanada as a member
of the Commonwealth, U.S.A. and U.S.S.R.are
facing each other over this ice- and island-
filled ocean. ... The growing importance of
the Polar Sea air route is influencing the
development of [the North].

 Canadian Department of Transportation
Press Release, 1957

As big industry races to find oil in ice, the Canadian

government has shown its own spike in Arctic concern.
Canadas Northern Strategy has established a national
imperative for increased frontier developmentone that is
internally unprecedented in its dedication to the economic,
infrastructural, and social growth of its Northern territories.4
Canadas extensive Northern commitments are only now

71
 Pamela Ritchot

5
emerging after decades of neglect. Historically crippled by
The utopian plan of Frobisher Bay, a
proposed Arctic new town in Nunavut, the geographic and economic strife common to insufficiently
intended to exude sovereignty through its
serviced, remote communities, the region has faced extreme
dominating urban forms and architectural
symbols alone. What it did instead, socio-economic lows across a range of issues such as housing,
however, was propose a scheme that was
access, and high costs of living. Past attempts to right these
incompatible with the Arctic landscape
and the settlement practices of its Inuit wrongs and exude Northern sovereignty over the land led to
population. See Andrew Waldron, Frobisher
earlier federal projects focused on utopian urban plans that
Bay Future: Megastructure in a Meta-Land,
Architecture and Ideas 8: 30. ended in failure, omitting the territory from the rest of the
6
nations progress.5 However, with the climate crisis progressing
Arctic Sea Ice Shatters All Previous Record
Lows: Diminished Summer Sea Ice Leads to and global interests in remote resources on the rise, the
Opening of the Fabled Northwest Passage,
Northern territory may see a reversal of this pattern when these
National Snow and Ice Data Center,
October 1, 2007, press release. Arctic conditions demand the governments close attention.
7
For instance, summer sea ice has receded by nearly 50% since
See Breaking the Ice: Everyone Wants a
Piece of the Arctic, Economist, August the mid-1980s suggesting that previously unnavigable Arctic
19, 2004.
waters will be completely open within five to fifteen years.6
8
Canadas 1921 motto, a nation from sea, The opening of Canadas Northwest Passagean international
to sea, changed in 2006 to acknowledge its
marine routewill expose Canadas northernmost coastline,
Arctic population.
9 the longest coastline in the world, to new levels of commerce,
Anthony Roberts, Design for the North,
tourism, and military expansion.7 Under its Northern Strategy,
Canadian Architect, November 1958.
Canada will truly be positioned to identify itself as a nation
from sea, to sea, to sea,8 and join this Northern alliance with
thresholds 40

industry and the Inuvialuit. Together they will each play a

role to catalyze a more stable future for the Arctic economy.
Anthony Roberts has optimistically commented on this timely
moment for Arctic urbanism, stating:

Canada has a greater opportunity than

any other country to provide a distinctive
national architecture. It will be an
architecture based not on a superficial
style or on a tradition, but a new and pure
form which to be successful, is bound to
be unique. Its originality will stem from
design based on a social pattern and a series
of physical and economic and political
conditions which are not found collectively
9
elsewhere in the world today.

Foreseeing the finite economic opportunity afforded by big

industry, the nations imperatives align with the development
capacities of the oil industry in a way that could reposition
Tuktoyaktuk for a scale of urban growth that the Inuvialuit
could not otherwise execute on their own.
Big industry has the capacity to redefine the nature of
urbanization as it tears through the local economies, cultural
practices, and fragile ecologies constructing company towns
in remote territories worldwide. The concept of oil urbanism

72
 Tuktoyaktuk

describes company town development where a communitys 10

Edward W. Soja, Postmetropolis: Critical
growth booms under the economic and infrastructural Studies of Cities and Regions (Oxford, UK:

support of the oil industry. Consequently, when this urban Blackwell, 2000).
11
infrastructure is not developed in concordance with local Saskia Sassen described the role of the

practices and land usesincluding subsistence hunting
and fishingthen the local population left to manage it on
their own can feel disharmony with its new, unfamiliar, and
abandoned urban morphology: an urban corpse. Prior to
global city to function as a point within
the global economy while developing as
a local site of production, innovation, and
finance. See Saskia Sassen, The Global City:
New York, London, Tokyo (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 2001).

discussions of oil urbanism, Patrick Geddess Valley Section 12

Robin Block, The Metropolis Inverted:
demonstrates how human settlements have evolved through The Rise and Shift to the Periphery and the

connections between economy, commerce, and the surrounding Remaking of the Contemporary City (PhD
dissertation, UCLA, 1994), 225.
terrain Fig. 4 contrary to the urban corpse concept. Geddes 13

demonstrates how urban fabric and form must be vitally Mason White, Resource Fields: Gas
Urbanism and Slick Cities, in Fuel, ed.
linked to the traditional practices and land uses specific to that John Knechtel (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,

region, thus implying that the abandoned company townif 2009), 72.

not wholly adopted by its local communitywill not survive.

Presently, however, such geographies of oil urbanization are
expanding under conditions that are decentralized, non-
physical, and diffuse. Soja describes this post-metropolis city

socio
FIG. 4 Patrick Geddess Valley Section, modified by author.

to be facing contemporary urban phenomena in which the

prescriptive models of regional urban form no longer relate
to local challenges.10 Instead these geographies take on global
challenges such as environmental, transportation, and energy
issues, whose local causalities are difficult to chart and whose
long-term community impact becomes unclear.11
Arctic urbanism will face oil urbanism in Tuktoyaktuk
as it implicates a global economy whose demand for offshore
resources [raises] the stakes for, and may very well demand
12
changes in the way we think about urban planning itself.
Mason White identifies this post-metropolitan discourse as an
Arctic reality, noting that the global quest for hydrocarbon
exploitation has led to hyperactive economic and geographic
development across Northern regions.13 This frantic urban
development will uphold weakened national boundaries
as global corporations aim to link even the most remote of
communities in a network of global cities. This oil urbanism
is giving shape to some of the worlds most imposing

73

FIG. 5 P
 ost-oil Tuktoyaktuk with a retro-
fitted infrastructure to support new
industries. Courtesy of author.
thresholds 40
FIG. 6 A new Arctic urbanism. Courtesy
of author.
***
Pamela Ritchot received her MArch
from MIT in 2011 where her design
thesis looked at the infrastructures and
operations of offshore oil drilling in the
Canadian Arctic. She is currently working
in Toronto on a regional infrastructure
plan and economic development project
for a mining town in Northern Canada.
Pamela holds a BED from the University
of Manitoba.
Pamela Ritchot
structures, such as the infrastructural megaprojects of the
Mackenzie Valley Pipeline, company towns such as Inuvik
in the Northwest Territories, and offshore structures such as
the Molkoya artificial island in Norways Snohvit Oil Field.
Given that the presence of resource wealth has a tendency to
evoke economic upheaval, cause political unrest, and launch
communities into capitalist-driven eras of development,
we can expect the Canadian Arctic to be upon a phase of
significant change. At Tuktoyaktuk, the contemporary form of
the company town will resemble the global city, a new Arctic
urbanism at the nexus of highly influential agents of change.
More than a century of conflict has shaped the narrative
of the North and, undoubtedly, a resolution must be found
between big industrys structures of permanence and the
finite lifespan of their operations. To take advantage of this
timely nexus of opportunity, the huge capital investments
of onshore and offshore development could incorporate the
phased transition of these complex oil infrastructures into new
occupations and programmatic uses for the Arctic community
Fig. 5 . Economic and architectural opportunity will then
mitigate this infrastructures abandonment as design innovation
will bring urban revitalization through the extension of both
its programmatic and operational flexibility and its structural
permanence. At Tuk, one possible plan of action might be
facilitating its transition from a seasonally-frozen ice economy
into a productive harbor economy as the open-ice season grows
increasingly long and the mobility of the Northwest Passage
brings considerable marine traffic to this Northern gateway.
In this scenario, Tuks local population is left with a solid,
infrastructural fabric upon which its future can thrive and
accept new growth as the conditions of the North continue
to change. By acknowledging the potential of these unique
contextual challenges and finding syntheses between each of
the key players demands, the Canadian Arctic can enter into
a period of strategic development to maximize immediate
opportunities and ensure self-sufficiency Fig. 6 . As it transitions
into a future well beyond the lifespan of offshore oil drilling,
Tuktoyaktuk can be a model for oil urbanisms capacity to
foster a new Arctic urbanism applicable to such contentious
sites around the globe.
74
Boundary
Line
Infra-
structure
Ronald Rael
 Ronald rael
But when one draws a
boundary it may be for
various kinds of reasons. If
I surround an area with a
fence or a line or otherwise,
the purpose may be to prevent
someone from getting in or
out; but may also be part of
a game and the players be
supposed, say, to jump over
the boundary; or it may
show where the property of
one man ends and that of
another begins; and so on. So
if I draw a boundary line that
is not yet to say what I am
drawing it for.
Wittgenstein 1
The US Secure Fence Act of 2006
funded the single largest domestic building
project of the twenty-first century. It financed
thresholds 40
approximately 800 miles of fortification
dividing the US from Mexico at a cost of up
to $16 million dollars per mile.2 Known as the
Mexico-United States Barrier, the Great Wall
of Mexico, Border Fence, and Border Wall,
the construction of this wall has transformed
large cities, small towns, and a multitude
of cultural and ecological biomes along its
path. The wall is envisioned for a tabula rasa
defined by Department of Homeland Security
Secretary Michael Chertoff. Chertoff was
given the unprecedented power by President
George W. Bush to waive any and all laws to
expedite the walls construction.3 Ultimately,
30 laws were waived or suspended for the
construction of the wall, including important
environmental, wildlife, and Native American
heritage protections. Ignoring the diverse
contexts found along the border raises critical
questions of ecology, politics, economics,
archaeology, urbanism, and eminent domain,
and radically redefines the territories of
the frontera.
The wall is fabricated from steel, wire
mesh, concrete, even re-purposed Vietnam-
era Air Force landing strips Fig. 1 .
It makes use of high-tech surveillance
systemsaerostat blimps, subterranean
76
probes, and heat sensors. The concept of
national security governs and militates
construction and design of the wall as the
success of the wall has been measured in the
numbers of intercepted illegal crossings. I
suggest that the wall, at such prices, should
be thought of not only as security, but also
as productive infrastructureas the very
backbone of a borderland ecosystem. Indeed,
coupling the wall with viable infrastructure,
focusing on water, renewable energy, and
urban social infrastructure, is a pathway to
security and safety in border communities and
the nations beyond them. This proposition is
for a wide array of retrofits and new schemes
for the US-Mexico border wall that build on
existing conditions and seek to ameliorate
problems created by the physical divider.
Over 700 miles of barrier have been
constructed since 2006 at a cost of $3.4
billion. Additionally, the new wall has already
been breached over 3,000 times, incurring
$4.4 million in repairs. The construction and
maintenance costs are estimated to exceed
$49 billion over the next 25 years and there
are several hundred more miles of wall
construction recently proposed.4 While recent
statistics show a 50 percent drop over the
past two years in the number of people caught
illegally entering the United States from
Mexico, human rights groups put the number
of deaths during attempted crossings at its
highest since 2006almost 6,000 deaths have
occurred since 1994.5
1 Ludwig Wittgenstein quoted in Judith Genova, Wittgenstein:
A Way of Seeing (London: Psychology Press, 1995), 122.
2 For a previous version of portions of this research, see
Ronald Rael, Commentary: Border Wall As Architecture,
Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 29 (2011):
409-420.
3 While there are a number of architectural definitions for
barrier, Chertoff describes the intervention as a tool.
See Michael Chertoff, Homeland Security: Assessing the First
Five Years (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
2009), 42.
4 See Tyche Hendricks, Study: Price for Border Fence Up To
$49 Billion, San Francisco Chronicle, January 8, 2007.
5 See Spencer S. Hsu, Border Deaths Are Increasing,
Washington Post, September 30, 2009.
 FIG. 1 Map of fence typologies. Courtesy of author.

77
Boundary Line Infrastructure

Double Wall
18 Steel
10 Steel
1316 Steel Mesh
Vehicular Barricade
Virtual Wall
Under Construction

socio
 Ronald rael
For the most part, architects and
designers have stayed away from the
border security issue. Ricardo Scofidio said
about architects involvement in a border
fence project, Its a silly thing to design,
a conundrum. You might as well leave it to
security and engineers.6 Rem Koolhaas,
who studied the Berlin Wall, described the
peculiarities of the issue:
I had hardly imagined how
West Berlin was actually
imprisoned by the Wall. I had
never really thought about
that condition, and the
paradox that even though it
was surrounded by a wall,
West Berlin was called free,
and that the much larger
area beyond the Wall was not
considered free ... [and that]
... the Wall was not really a
thresholds 40
single object but a system that
consisted partly of things
that were destroyed on the
site of the Wall, sections
of buildings that were still
standing and absorbed or
incorporated into the Wall,
and additional walls some
really massive and modern,
others more ephemeral all
together contributing to
an enormous zone. That was
one of the most exciting
things: it was one wall that
always assumed a different
condition . 7
The US-Mexico wall has created a similar
territory of paradox, horror, transformation,
and flux, but at a much larger scale. It divides
rivers, farms, homes, public lands, cultural
sites, wildlife reserves, and migration routes,
and is planned to cut through a university.
While the wall is always constructed on US
soil, in many places it is constructed as far
as two miles away from the actual territorial
78
border. Removed from the market economy,
this land in between the political boundary
of the United States and the security barrier
loses its productive value. By my own
estimates, there are approximately 40,000
acres of US land that will lie on the Mexican
side of the border wallan area equal to
twice the size of Manhattan. To counter this
economically neutralized land, the security
infrastructure must be put to work through
contextual engagement and investment. I
propose a productive border through site
specific and modular solutions focused on
water infrastructure, renewable energy, and
social infrastructure. This proposal will also
highlight some of the potential benefits these
productive improvements can engender.
The border wall has already proven to
be an effective, if accidental, water collection
system. Water from desert rains typically
drain across the borderyet in areas such
as the port of entry at Sonoyta and Organ
Pipe Cactus National Monument, or in the
Ambos Nogales, the fence acts as a dam,
causing flooding and environmental damage
FIG. 2 F
 looding in Nogales. Sean Sullivan, Courtesy
of Customs and Border Patrol.
Fig. 2 .8
When water collection is considered
proactively, it can become a system with
transformative consequences for the desert
communities along the border. For example,
6 William Hamilton, A Fence with More Beauty, Fewer
Barbs, New York Times, June 18, 2006.
7 Hans Ulrich Obrist, Part 1: On Berlins New
Architecture, in Interviews, vol. 1, ed. Thomas Boutoux
(Milan: Charta, 2003), 507-528.
8 See Report: Faulty Design Turned Border Fence Into
Dam, Arizona Daily Star, August 15, 2008.
 Boundary Line Infrastructure
the city of El Paso levies storm water fees
on all landowners based on the amount of
their propertys impervious surfaces. They
plan on raising $650 million for a system
of storm water catchments to ameliorate
the consequences of flooding. Dividing El
Paso from Juarez is a large concrete basin
defining the location where the Rio Grande-
Rio Bravo River once flowed. By locating
these catchments along the basin, a linear
park and riparian ecology could once again
FIG. 3 Water catchment in El Paso. Courtesy of author.
flow through the two cities Fig. 3 . Locating
additional rainwater collection shed roofs
along the existing wall would increase the
amount of water collected and create cool,
well-shaded places where performances,
markets, and events could take place.
Creating a linear water park in the space
where the Rio Grande-Rio Bravo once flowed
also has security implications. The purpose
of wall construction is not to stop the flow of
immigrants from the south, but to slow it down.
According to the Department of Homeland
Security, the wall gives border patrol agents
only a few more minutes time to stop an illegal
crossing.9 The department also sees rivers
as natural obstacles that offer five minutes of
added time to the border patrols advantage.
A linear water park that reintroduces water
9 David McLemore, Texas To See Border Fence Construction
Next Year Despite Opposition, Dallas Morning News,
December 5, 2007.
10 George B. Frisvold and Margriet F. Caswell, Transboundary
Water Management Game-theoretic Lessons for Projects
On the US-Mexico Border, Agricultural Economics 24
(2000):101-111.
11 George W. Bush, Introductory Speech at the Signing of the
Secure Fence Act, Washington DC, October 26, 2006.
79
into the existing basin along the wall that
meanders on both sides of the border can
create a doubly-secure linear tactical, social,
ecological, and hydrological infrastructure.
The New River is considered the most
polluted river in the United States.10 It flows
north from Mexicali and crosses the border at
Calexico. New River toxicity is comprised of
chemical runoff; pathogens like tuberculosis,
hepatitis, and cholera; and fecal coliform
bacteria, which at the border checkpoint
far exceeds US-Mexico treaty limits. The
New River then flows through the Imperial
Valley, which is a major source of winter fruits
and vegetables, cotton, and grain. While
the Secure Fence Act of 2006 was enacted,
according to President Bush, to help protect
the American people from illegal immigration,
drug smuggling, and terrorism, the New River
represents a far more dangerous flow north
from Mexico in need of containment.11
A wastewater treatment wall located in the
two-mile-long wasteland that buffers Mexicali
from the Imperial Valley is a solution to
the illegal entry of toxins to the US. The
socio
pollution problem is expected to worsen as
Mexicalis population, already at 1.3 million,
continues to expand without adequate
infrastructure. For $33 million, the same cost
as the wall that divides Calexico and Mexicali,
it is possible to construct a wastewater
treatment facility with the capacity to handle
20 million gallons per day of effluent from
Fig. 4 W
 astewater treatment wall in Calexico, California.
Courtesy of author.
 Ronald rael

the New River Fig. 4 . This proposed facility between people with common interests
is composed of a linear pond filtration are formed. Social capital, a concept that
and purification system, creating a secure refers to the value of social relations and
border infrastructure. The by-product of the the role of cooperation and confidence to
wastewater treatment facility would include achieve collective or economic results, can
methane and water, a combination that could be produced by such networks and is a core
power a series of lit, green corridors, creating element in the fabric of communities: social
a healthy, social infrastructure that could join capital can produce safety and security,
these growing border cities. friendship and community, civic identity
Next, the most untapped potential for and economic value. Over time, social
solar development in the United States lies capital builds social infrastructure, in the
along the US-Mexico border. Solar farms,
in turn, are highly secure installations. Re-
allocating funds used to construct and
maintain the border wall for the construction
of energy infrastructure along the border
creates scenarios that, in many instances,
are more secure than the existing wall, and
simultaneously provide solar energy to the
Southwest. The stretch between Nogales
and Douglas saw 87 miles of border wall
construction at a cost of $333.5 million,
while the largest solar farm in the world, the
thresholds 40

Olmedilla Photovoltaic Park in Spain, cost $530

million. For $333.5 million, 54 miles of profit- Fig. 6 F
 amily time through the fence. Courtesy of Sandy Huffaker.

generating solar farm could be constructed at

form of parks and other civic
amenitiesa key element in the
health of communities. One of the
most devastating consequences
of border wall security is the
division of communities, cities,
neighborhoods, and families
the erosion of social infra-
structure Fig. 6 . Even so, sports
have served as a way to cope
with the realities of the wall.
Volleyball is played using the
fence as a net in several sites
along the border, and bi-national
yoga classes have been held
through the border wall Fig. 7 .
Using the border as an armature
Fig. 7 B
 order yoga. Courtesy of author (photographer unknown). for a linear urban park through
certain urban geographies could
40 feet wide, powering 40,000 households Fig. 5 . offer pedestrian and bicycle routes through
While most of this work has been focused the city Fig. 8 . The linear park, in turn, could
on public utility-style resources, the increase adjacent property values and the
importance of social improvements along quality of life on both sides of the border while
the border should be stressed. Sports, for providing an important green corridor through
example, are social activities where networks the city.

80
 Boundary Line Infrastructure

socio
FIG. 5 S
 olar wall. Courtesy of author.

Fig. 8 Bike and pedestrian wall. Courtesy of author.

81
 Ronald rael

The infrastructural improvements of World War II with a vision of hemispheric

under consideration here are designed to
respond to the complex and often labyrinthine
fiscal, cultural, and political realities of the
border. Border towns lack the infrastructure
that allows them to be sustainable, healthy
cities and a border wall that integrates social,
water, and energy infrastructure could have
the potential to provide needed amenities.
Infrastructural elements are highly secure
facilities and profits from infrastructure
development projects can contribute to
increased national security and immigration
reform through the creation of jobs through
the manufacturing of the vital components that
make up infrastructural technologies, which
could also be located along the border.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt set out a
course for US-Mexico relations at the onset
thresholds 40
security that was not beholden to a limited
view of border fortification. He said, What
I seek to convey is the historic truth that the
United States as a nation has at all times
maintained oppositionclear, definite
oppositionto any attempt to lock us in
behind an ancient Chinese wall.12 Yet, the
border fence in its current form recalls the
inflexibility and ancient strategy of a wall as a
singular means of security. Chertoff has stated
that a fence by itself is not going to work, but
in conjunction with other tools, it can help.
There are many reasons to think that border
security can be achievedand will only be
achievedby employing a more multivalent
and flexible tool: a border infrastructure that
has yet to be imagined.

12 Franklin D. Roosevelt, Four Freedoms, in Great Speeches,

ed. John Grafton (New York: Dover Publications, 1999), 93.

***
Ronald Rael is an architect, an author, and Assistant Professor
at the University of California, Berkeley. He received his Master
of Architecture degree at Columbia University in the City of New
York. His practice, Rael San Fratello Architects with Virginia San
Fratello, works at the intersection of architecture, art, culture, and
the environment and has won numerous awards and accolades.

82
Dissolving
the
Grey
Periphery

Neeraj Bhatia and Alexander DHooghe

 Neeraj Bhatia and Alexander DHooghe

Los Angeles is fine in many respects, but

it lacks legibilitythat factor which
ultimately involves identity and the whole
business of the city as an extension
of oneself, and the necessity for
comprehension of this extension.
Alison and Peter Smithson 1

As in the large monochromatic works of

Mark Rothko, mass society was seen as
an endless ocean, free and mellow, with
neither a centre nor frontiers.
Andrea Branzi 2

A Grey Synthesis
1
thresholds 40

Alison and Peter Smithson, Ordinariness
and Light (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
1970), 182.
2 that lacked legibility and differentiation, threatening the civic
Andrea Branzi, No-Stop City:
Archizoom Associati (Orlans, France: HYX,
2006), 151.
In their critique of Los Angeles, Allison and Peter
Smithson witnessed an emerging territory of urbanization
consciousness of the city. They might say that this spatial
condition was greyan indistinct piece of terrain without
difference or limits. Not distinct enough to be deemed a color,
grey is often defined as neutral or dull. Its neutralizing effect is
evident when it emerges as the synthesis from a stew of various
paint colors. Grey is perhaps to the suburban condition as
water is to fish. It is neither offensive nor attractive to anyone
it is just there. The Smithsons spatial critique is intriguing
because it linked legibility of the formal configuration of a city
to the identity of the citys constituents. Simultaneous to the
Smithsons critique, the artist and architect Andrea Branzi was
coming to terms with a mass society without limits, distinction,
or hierarchy. The socio-political condition described by Branzi
(and hinted at by the Smithsons) framed a new public that we
could say was also synthesizing into grey. Branzis realization
occurred at a moment of evolving identity politics, wherein
group identities began to fragment at an accelerated rate into
various niche audiences, instigating notions of tolerance and
compromise between interest groups. The endless ocean of
mass society without centers or limits contained a similar
dilemma to the one observed by the Smithsonsthe inability
to provide identity to a grey city and its publics. Yet at this
very moment, Los Angeless audiences and cultures already

84
 Dissolving the Grey Periphery

began expressing themselves explicitly in the public realm. 3

According to political theorist Hannah
So, while composed of several competing and often irrecon- Arendt, pluralism is the dialectic relationship

cilable groups, the city public began to realize all the possible between our distinction and equality, and is
the most integral component to a thriving
differences called for by liberal pluralism and, in the end, only public sphere. It is distinct, in that we all

produced a grey synthesis. Is there a manner to transform the have a unique and subjective viewpoint
that provides richness to the public sphere,
notion of grey by staging such irreconcilable values?3 Starting and equal, in that we are all humans and

with the spatial condition of grey, we forecast the socio- share common goals. For Arendt, without
plurality and the public sphere, we cannot
political ramifications of a new formal organization in the affirm our subjectivities into a form of reality.

urbanized field. A reexamination of the dialectic within an

From Grey to Colors
The notion of grey is easily witnessed in the contemporary
agonized state of plurality offers clues on
how to transform the grey into a grouping
of colors. See Hannah Arendt, The Human
Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1958), 175-176.
4
Isaiah Berlin, The Lasting Effects in The
Roots of Romanticism (Princeton, NJ:

metropolis, and perhaps most apparent in the periphery of Princeton University Press, 1999), 146-147.
5
North American cities that now resemble mid-twentieth Isaiah Berlin, Two Concepts of Liberty
in Four Essays on Liberty (Oxford: Oxford
century Los Angeles. These vast territories are characterized
University Press, 1958).
by homogeneous and unplanned sprawl without formal limits,
legibility, or identity. Scarborough is one such landscape of
grey, located on the eastern periphery of Toronto. Scarborough
Town Centre, a failed project for a modernist civic core, was
to provide identity to the periphery as well as connect this
territory to the rest of Toronto. Without attacking the entire

socio
periphery of Scarborough, we focus on this intersection as the
catalyst for the separation of grey and the emergence of
distinct identities.
To erode the notion of grey in Scarborough, we propose
a reexamination of Isaiah Berlins concept of agonized
pluralism, an approach argued for by Richard Sommer. For
Berlin, the conflict between divergent beliefs, despite their
individual justification, is the root of pluralism.4 Accordingly,
Berlins proposed pluralism would not allow for a synthesis
of such competing identities but, rather, stage an uneasy
coexistence. Moreover, Berlin, quoting Schumpeter, calls for
the civilized man to differentiate himself from the barbarian
through understanding the relativity of ones convictions (in the
light of the equal value of other, opposing positions) while
simultaneously standing for them unflinchingly.5 By way
of addressing grey at large, we propose that a spatial
reconfiguration of this core could in fact yield the template
evoked by Berlins concept of agonized plurality. Transforming
grey into a series of colors, we employ Berlin to reinforce
pluralisms divergent values without synthesizing liberal
pluralism into a field of grey.

85
 Neeraj Bhatia and Alexander DHooghe

Crystallizing Formal and Typological

Differences

The development of Scarboroughs core emerged from

generic suburban planning and resulted in a grouping of
unfinished developments that contain no boundaries or limits.
Nevertheless, the center has the potential to be a major civic
node for eastern Toronto as it is tied to regional infrastructure
lines including the highway, rapid transit, and major arterial
streets. Upon closer examination of the site, however, almost-
districts that share a formal-typological identity appear
commercial, high-rise tower, institutional, industrial, mixed-use,
and open space Fig. 1 . While each of these districts contains a
clear building type and associated demographic, the project of
the district was never completed in its entirety. This resulted in
a site with no apparent logic and an equally confused network of
redundant roads Fig. 2. What if these districts of almost-identities
could be clarified and made into legible entities Fig. 3 ?
thresholds 40

Fig. 1

Fig. 2
86
 Dissolving the Grey Periphery

Fig. 3

socio
Fig. 4 Fig. 5

An Infrastructural Object to Connect All

the Exacerbated Difference

A neutral void lingers and is framed between these legible

districts. Unclaimed, the void belongs to no one and everyone,
enabling it to define the public sphere in Scarborough while
also connecting the various districts Fig. 4 . Currently, this void
features a rapid transit stop, bus drop-off, and automobile
routes. If all of the surface parking and flows of the site were
consolidated into this space, it would begin to link the districts
and their diverse users Fig. 5 . Flow infrastructures define the
form of the transfer station, while soft programs colonize the

87
 Neeraj Bhatia and Alexander DHooghe
thresholds 40

Fig. 6

88
 Dissolving the Grey Periphery

parking platforms to take advantage of moments of commuter 6

Congress for the New Urbanism, Charter
inactivity. These informal programs include markets, theatres, of the New Urbanism (Chicago: released by
bingo halls, and recreational activities that reaffirm the the author, 2001).

diversity of the publics existing within the islands Fig. 6 . The

infrastructure and users are united on a collective platform
of plurality, the plinthesis, while also being connected to
the larger region of Toronto through a transfer station Fig. 7 .
While separation and fragmentation have allowed these distinct
islands to have coherent yet competing identities, how should these
districts be connected to each other and to the regional network of
infrastructure?

socio
Fig. 7

The Mall Atrium as Glue

While conventional good urbanismas proposed by
the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU)6involves the
continual attempt of animating the street, this approach is no
longer tenable in Scarborough. The walking street is dead in
Scarborough and we do not see any realistic argument that can
revive it in such peripheral sites. In fact, the only public space
that functions on the site is the existing malla romanticized
version of the street, complete with weather control. What if
the mall atrium is the template for connection in the suburban
context? Liberated from commercial interests, atria could be
used as an internalized connective network. Five distinct atria
connect the various districts internally as well as to the transfer
station and its associated infrastructure. These climatically
controlled spaces are liberated to be unconditionally open
to all. The mall is thus reconfigured into a micro-city, the
compacted public realm of Scarborough, and is connected with
the world at large through the plinthesis.

89
 Neeraj Bhatia and Alexander DHooghe

Irreconcilable Utopias

These grouped islands each contain their own

irreconcilable utopia, standing with unflinching conviction in
contradistinction to the ubiquitous sprawl of the metropolis.
Each utopia contains a distinct identity, an extension of its
constituent user group. The neutral collective infrastructures of
flow, atria, and parking platforms connect them into a coherent
whole without compromising their individual identities Fig. 8.
This uneasy coexistence of pluralism acknowledges both the
individual and collective, and ultimately, the public sphere.
Only by creating boundaries for each island can we understand
difference within the grey and form an identity. Without such
edges, we are condemned to swim without purpose in the grey
goo of suburbia.
thresholds 40

This project was produced as part of the

Cities Centre Workshop: Build Toronto
carried out at the University of Toronto,
John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture,
Landscape, and Design.

Team Directors: Alexander DHooghe and

Neeraj Bhatia with Shelagh McCartney
and Francesco Martire

Fig. 8
Design Team Phase 2: Nathan Bortolin,
Dave Freedman, Han Liu, Salome Nikuradze,
Mahtab Oskuee, Sanford Riley, Kristin Ross,
Steven Socha, and Celina Yee

Design Team Phase 1: Nathaniel Addison,

Justin Cheung, Song Deng, Gaston
Fernandez, Robert E Fiorino, Andria Ya-Yu
Fong, Zachariah Elan Glennon, Meagan
Donkin Gumbinger, Darius Gumushdjian,
Martin Hogue, Man Yee Stanton Hung,
Negar Jazbi, Ada-Nkem Juwah, Zeena
Hashim Kammoona, and Mandy Allison Wong

***
Neeraj Bhatia is a director of InfraNet
Lab, founder of The Open Workshop, and
the Visiting Wortham Teaching Fellow at
Rice University.

Alexander DHooghe is Associate

Professor in Architectural Urbanism at
MIT, and director of the Organization for
Permanent Modernity (ORG).

90
 Park
as
Philan-
thropy:
Bow-Wows
Redevelopment at
Miyashita Koen

Yoshiharu Tsukamoto, interviewed by Casey Goodwin

 Yoshiharu Tsukamoto

Built on a narrow plot of artificial ground, Miyashita Park,

one of the few green spots in Tokyos Shibuya Ward, occupies
the rooftop of a 1960s low-rise parking structure within this
urban sub-center that combines business, commerce, and
leisure. Extending 330 meters in length and averaging 25
meters in width, this tree-covered expanse had long been
underutilized due to poor upkeep and crowding by a large
number of illegally camped homeless persons.
In 2010, Miyashita Park was fenced in order to implement
a privately funded refurbishment plan sponsored by the
Japanese subsidiary of the international sportswear giant, Nike.
In the arrangement between Nike Japan and Tokyos Shibuya
Ward, naming rights were purchased through 2020, granting
permission for the name Miyashita Nike Park. This was to be
thresholds 40

the first case of a Japanese local authority and a publicly held

company collaborating to upgrade a park.
Yoshiharu Tsukamoto, principal of Tokyo-based design
firm Atelier Bow-Wow, first noticed MiyashitaPark in the early
90s and the park was eventually featured in the architects
breakthrough publication Made In Tokyo, with the punning
title park on park. 1Ten years later in 2008, a representative
from Nike Japan approached Atelier Bow-Wow to request a
scheme for the subsidized redevelopment.
With local residents and business owners favoring the
intervention, a countermovement backed by anti-Nike activists
and support groups for the homeless emerged. Beyond the
dispute over the sale of park naming rights lay the heart of the
controversy: differing interpretations of the civic role of public
park space.2

The project opened on April 30th of 2011.

Casey Goodwin

92
 Park as Philanthropy

Casey Goodwin
What initially sparked
your interest in Miyashita
Park? Describe your earliest
encounter with this rumpled
public space.3

Yoshiharu Tsukamoto
I first became interested
in the park as a student. I
saw an intriguing but mostly
vacant space, over an existing
parking structure in the
middle of Shibuya, one of the
animated commercial sub-
centers of Tokyo. A green roof
is common today but twenty-
five years ago, it was not. The
shape of the site is extremely
FIG. 1 Photo of Miyashita Park from Made in Tokyo.
long and narrow. That made
it appear as an interstitial, or using taxpayers money. At the beginning
leftover space in the urban scheme. of the twentieth century in Japan, private
Also, the park is not an A-Grade philanthropists helped finance and create
public buildingsuch as a library, museum, new cultural facilities. For example, Tokyos
or concert hall. Under Japans planning law, National Museum of Modern Art received

its a B-Grade public space serving daily
requirements. As most of Tokyos A-Grade
public facilities have been designed by
architects of an older generation, I feel that
my generation needs to work on B-Grade
typologies, and I wanted to define our role and
mission. So I included Miyashita as one of the
examples in my guidebook Made In Tokyo Fig. 1 .4
socio
major funding from Japans Bridgestone
Corporation following World War II.
What Nike Japan attempted is a joint
venture between philanthropy and marketing.
Finally, it became pure philanthropy, since
they opted not to invest their naming rights.
So the park will henceforth remain Miyashita
Park, as before.

CG
In 2004, Shibuya Ward officials moved
to cleanup Miyashita Park, and that would
eventually lead to the privately funded
refurbishment effort. At what point did Atelier
Bow-Wow become involved?
CG
In a project with so many diverse
stakeholdersboth public and privatehow
did you come to see your role as Architect?
Conversely, what makes a project socially
conscious for Bow-Wow?

YT
A representative from Nike Japan came to
Bow-Wow to discuss the project in 2008, some
ten years after our guidebook inclusion. What
they had in mind was a new framework for
improving the quality of public space through
a joint public-private collaboration.
Today, the gap between citizens and
public authorities is wide yet people believe
public spaces must be built and maintained
YT
In the beginning, the schematic for
Miyashita Park was handled by my seminar
at Tokyo Tech. Invariably our students
1 Yoshiharu Tsukamoto, Momoyo Kaijima, and Junzo Kuroda,
Made In Tokyo (Tokyo: Inax, 2001), 64-65.
2 For details on the controversy surrounding the refurbishment
plan, see http://www.ourplanet-tv.org/?q=node/489.
3 This interview occurred March 2011 in Tokyo.
4 Tsukamoto et al., Made In Tokyo, 64-65.

93
 Yoshiharu Tsukamoto
FIG. 2 Drawing of proposal for redeveloped Miyashita Park.
most important task is achieving a real
and supportive framework, with the actual
components remaining secondary. In this
sense, the role of the Architect is to oversee
the achievement of a framework that allows
the project to take shape and to happen.
Therefore, a socially conscious project
is one that analyzes the nature of the project
itself. To do this, you must think about society.
Buildings are always socially produced.
thresholds 40
They reflect the society that makes them. So
my approach to building is anthropological,
calling into question first where and how we
live in relation to history and community.
CG
Please talk about the program and
proposed upgrades for Miyashita. Also, do
you envision any loss or compromise vis--vis
the parks original state?
YT
When I was a student, no homeless
people occupied the park, but by the time
Bow-Wow started work, the situation had
changed. The space was overrun and had
also grown dark due to poor upkeep of the
zelkova trees. Our initial intention was to
create greater transparency by pruning these
trees, and we eventually collaborated with a
landscape designer in order to reestablish
sight lines. Our client, Nike Japan, also
wanted to add two new sports facilitiesa
skateboarding park and a climbing wallto
supplement the two existing futsal 5 courts,
but for that we needed more space. Our
resolution was to expand the park on all
sides to the full structural limits. We gained
1.5 meters on every side, allowing us to
augment circulation and include a number of
concrete benches along the perimeter where
onlookers can now sit. Another brief was to
enhance access-ibility, so we proposed a
broad staircase facing the street crossing
and a new elevator Fig. 2 . Such practical issues
were mandates from the city, which owns and
maintains the park as a public facility.
Nike Japan originally hoped for a new
clubhouse but this was an architectural
addition, requiring a building permit. The
existing substructure lacked the requisite
strength. We negotiated with the authorities
to reestablish our ground line at park level,
rather than at street level. This redefined the
parking facility as infrastructure, a feature
normally situated sub-grade. Technically
speaking, the new clubhouse could now be
undertaken with greater freedom.
It took three years to design the new
clubhouse and during this time, the building
permission officer in Shibuya Ward was
replaced. His replacement insisted that the
existing parking structure didnt meet seismic
standards and would therefore have to be
retrofitted. Nike Japan, however, wanted to
get on with the project. So we put the new
clubhouse on hold, and are enhancing and
upgrading the existing one.
The surroundings of the existing
clubhouse are all park. There is no roof or
floor elementjust walls or reset boundaries.
The elevator is the only structure we needed a
building permit for and is constructed at street
level, quite separate to the garage. Moreover,
any soil we excavated from the garage rooftop
was replaced with new materials6 equal in
94
 Park as Philanthropy
weight. Thus, no additional weight has been
imposed on the infrastructure below.
CG
You have maintained the existing zelkova
trees in the skatepark area, carefully sculpting
the ramps around them. Can you discuss the
presence of these trees in light of the added
skateboarding activities?
YT
A skatepark is very noisy, so it shouldnt
be close to apartment or residential buildings.
Railway tracks and commercial buildings
flank this end of the park so, despite the
trees, we felt this was the best place to put
the skatepark. The trees, in turn, became the
starting point for our design. I believed that
protection of the trees could be integrated
with skateboarding obstacles, such as banks
or quarter-pipes. Having visited several
skateparks before starting work, I noticed
the lack of any shaded space. So I thought
skating under and in-between the trees could
provide shade while adding a new feature to
the game Fig. 3 .
FIG. 3 Photo of Miyashita Park from Made in Tokyo.
CG
6 In order to minimize the load imposed by the skatepark on the
In Tokyo Subdivision Files,7 you
categorized different behaviors, belongings,
and garments of building users Fig. 4 . What
did you learn from this study and how did it
influence your design process at Miyashita Park?
7 Yoshiharu Tsukamoto et al., Tokyo Subdivision Files (Tokyo:
95
FIG. 4 S
 ample catalog entry from Tokyo
Subdivision Files.
YT
It was 2002 when I collected that research
with graduate students. Tokyo is not a single
society; rather, it is a collection of very diverse
groups sharing common traits. Each individual
socio
belongs to several component communities,
and the resulting agglomeration
represents todays society. At that
point, I thought about composition
of the city, building the hypothesis
that its origins reside in the bodies
of peopleas everyone has their
own history and background.
For example, before
the collapse of the bubble
economy we had lots of Iranian
guest workers at construction
sites. Every weekend, they
gathered at Yoyogi Park, which
5  Futsal is a reduced variant of European
soccer and is played on a hard, small-scale
surface often indoors. The name derives
from the Portuguese futebol de salo and
the Spanish ftbol de salon, both meaning
indoor football.
existing substructure, a novel construction technique making use
of polystyrene foam was used. The material is an ideal alternative
to dirt backfill because it is lightweight, easily cut to shape, and
neither compacts nor retains moisture. For details, see Casey
Goodwin, Foam Follows Function: The Making of a Skatepark,
ARCADE 28, no. 1 (2010).
Inax, 2002).
 Yoshiharu Tsukamoto

was transformed into an instant market. specific locale, then transform and adapt them
There were barbers and halal butchers. based on human use.
There were people selling shish kabobs, For Miyashita, we had to be cognizant of
medicine, illegal phone cards, and electronic the cultures involvedsuch as Nike Japan and
gadgets. I discovered that while they were Shibuya Wardas well as the communities
lower-class laborers in Tokyo, they had of skaters, climbers, and futsal lovers Fig. 7 .
formerly been highly skilled professionals. We interviewed them and considered their
They used their weekends to share older preferences and modes of thinking. The new
skills and knowledge. No one had planned facilities will invite these various communities
this makeshift market; instead, it sprouted both to perform and to draw spectators Fig. 8 .
spontaneously. Could this be how cities
began? Soon, I became fascinated with
other Tokyo areas, observing behaviors
and documenting types of clothing and
accoutrements specific to each group.
This furnished us with important ideas
about how to work on the city and use
public space. We initially tested these ideas
through art installationssuch as oversized
furnishings and mobile structures FigS. 5, 6 .
By trial and error we arrived at the notion
of a Micro Public Space. We always start
working with materials and resources in a
thresholds 40

Fig. 7 Futsal court as redeveloped in Miyashita Park.

FIG. 5 W
 hite Limosine Yatai installation as a Micro Public Space.

FIG. 8 Spectators at rockwall as built in Miyashita Park

CG
Professor Jonathan Hill of the Bartlett
School in London classifies users into three
categories. Passive users merely inhabit
space and show no other concern for it;
reactive users modify space to suit their
needs; and creative users often discover
ways of using space unanticipated by
architects, and hence confer new meaning
FIG. 6 D
 rawings for Furnicycle installation as a
Micro Public Space.

96
 Park as Philanthropy
upon existing places.8 In what ways do you
envision these user types interacting with your
design for Miyashita?
YT
For us, there are no passive users, since a
park is not a business site. There is no service
being provided. You need to import your own
skills to perform there and enjoy the place.
For instance, being on the same level as the
railway tracks, someone might start running
and compete with passing trains. This could
be a new sport! So the park is geared toward
Hills creative users. Others, for example,
may enjoy having a picnic on the north side,
which has fewer facilities. Yet, for us, this is
not just reactive. It too is a creative use
of space.
CG
In The Production of Space, the late
French Marxist sociologist and philosopher
Henri Lefebvre indicates three activities
responsible for spatialization: spatial
practice, that guarantees a certain continuity
and cohesion, along with actual lived
representational spaces and ideological
representations of space. These constitute
a tool of thought and action thus a means
of control and therefore of domination. 9
Can these relate to Atelier Bow-Wows more
unified way of thinking about shakai kukan, or
social space?
YT
For me, its a question of subjectivity.
Users normally determine the representation
of a given space, while historically architects
and planners have tended to dominate
the space of representation itself. Yet, in
reality, spatial practice has no dominant
subjectivity. I believe spatial practice, by its
nature, invites all subjects to participate.
Im interested in Lefebvres espace
sociale because it emphasizes a wish for
the production of space, rather than casting
users as mere bystanders, let alone objects
of spatial practice. For us, social space
is inherently deficient: not stable, always
changing, continually depending on its
users for completion. We must think of social
97
space, then, as reflecting each and every
intervention. The moment we [in an open
society] start to observe and touch social
space, it transforms itself.
CG
As an architect practicing in Tokyo,
how do you view the mission and role of
parks today?
YT
One big role of parks in Tokyo is
to provide vacant space in case of an
emergency, such as a big earthquake. In this
event, parks would be the most important
facilities in the city, providing post-disaster
relief. Another role is daily use. So the
structuring of parks must be thought of
in terms of this double context. Yet, just
being vacant space for evacuation is not
enough. Parks should be a robust lifeline as
well. A project of ours, PKO (Public Kitchen
Operation), is an example of this new type of
park structure Fig. 9 .
socio
Fig. 9 Model for PKO (Public Kitchen Operation).
There are many jido koen (childrens
parks) in Tokyos residential neighborhoods.
Using a master plan, the location and size
were determined based on the number
of inhabitants living in each area. Today,
8 Jonathan Hill, Actions of Architecture: Architects and Creative
Users (London: Routledge, 2003).
9 Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space (Oxford, UK:
Blackwell, 1991), 38-39.
 Yoshiharu Tsukamoto

these parks usually contain mundane play

structures as a result of product liability laws.
Some authorities have altogether removed
such equipment. So jido koen have become
generic and vacant spaces.
Bow-Wow has speculated on ways to
create interest within and variety among these
parks. For instance, in our contribution to
the Tokyo Recycle Project, we made several
propositions for thematic elementslike a
gigantic jungle gym or huge sand dunes. With
Japans decreasing birth rate, its also time
to transform public spaces with older users
in mind. Hopefully, our work on Miyashita
Park will encourage more companies to take
up this genuinely new model of community
redevelopment.
thresholds 40

***
Yoshiharu Tsukamoto, JIA is principal, along with partner
Momoyo Kijima, of Atelier Bow-Wow. Their books Pet
Architecture Guide and Made in Tokyo have led to exhibitions
around the world, along with a number of commissions for
houses, museums, and commercial buildings. Tsukamoto is
also Associate Professor at Tokyo Institute of Technology,
and has taught at Harvard, UCLA, and the Barcelona Institute
of Technology.

Casey Goodwin earned a BA in Architectural Studies from the

University of Washington in 2008. He is currently a postgraduate
Japan Ministry of Education Fellow in the Department of
Architecture at Tokyo Institute of Technology and his writing has
been included in Column 5 Journal and ARCADE Magazine.

98
 Mussels
in
Concrete:
A Social
Architectural
Practice

Esen Gke zdamar


1 Play in the District, an installation by architect Arzu
Play in the District was also installed
as a documentary film in exhibitions In-
Between-Arada-Tra and Lives and Works in
stanbul. See Ayse Orhun Gultekin, ed., In
Between = Arada = Tra (Istanbul: Visual Arts
Directorate, 2010).
2
Arzu Kusaslan, interview with author, 2010.
3 involvement.2 She proposed to transform the neglected ground
Gultekin, In Between = Arada = Tra.
4 within the county by the re-activation of textile workshops and
Although participatory methods in
architecture and urban planning at both the
individual and institutional level have been
applied in many Western countries since the
1960s, few projects in this tradition have
been realized in Turkey.
thresholds 40
FIG. 1 View from the back entrance of the street.
FIG. 2 The video installation of Play in the District,
in Tophane-i Amire, Istanbul.
Esen Gke zdamar
Kusaslan exhibited in Antoni Muntadass Istanbul In-Between
workshop, addresses questions of public involvement in the
urban transformation of Zeytinburnu County, Istanbul.1
Kusaslan states that one of her primary objectives was to
explore the artistic possibilities arising from community
the transformation of a neglected alleyway into a playground,
revealing the unforeseen potentials of these spaces Fig. 1 . With
the use of tactile materials in the designated playground
street, the textile workshops can recall the former identity of
Zeytinburnu as the center of the leather and textile industry as
far back as 1453.3 This aimed to produce urban regeneration as
part of Kusaslans project.
According to Muntadas, the state
of in-between in Istanbul was to be
approached through individual encounters
between the artist and the city. As Kusaslan
lives and works in the community, her
familiarity with the dynamics of the area
enabled her to work closely with the residents
to test the effects of the countys rapid
urbanizationand her transformation of
an alleyway into a playground compelled
participation of neighborhood residents. In
the urban landscape of Istanbul, the project
showed a promising means to break the
static relation between public space and
architecture Fig. 2 . Kusaslans project was an
act of architectural social organization that
was new to Turkey.4 Its use of participation
could be a prototype for planning in
Zeytinburnu County, and serves as a model
for urban transformation in Istanbul at large.
Zeytinburnu County
The first migrants came to Zeytinburnu
in the 1950s, and the county became one of
the first and largest squatter areas in Istanbul.
Even though legislation was passed to prevent
gecekondus, or slum buildings, in 1960,
their rate of construction continued to rise.
Additionally, with a rapid population increase
from the 1970s onwards, gecekondus were
100
 Mussels in Concrete

replaced by multi-story, concrete apartment blocks. Erected on 5

informally subdivided land, these blocks lacked infrastructure
and public open space. During the construction of these newly
erected buildings, speed over quality resulted in the use of
materials that could be found easily in the existing area. Mussel
shells from the coast of the Marmara Sea were incorporated
into the cement mixture to satisfy demand. Despite poor
structural capacities, musselled buildings became increasingly
common. The typical building consisted of a textile workshop
According to the plan, 14% of buildings and
heavily damaged housing units in the county
are to be demolished over a 20 year span.
See http://www.ibb.gov.tr.
6
Ibid.
7
One of the dweller-rights activist groups
is Sokaklar Bizim Platform which aims to
increase conciousness on urban life, improve
conditions on streets, and support walkable
communities.

on the ground floor and several residences above, and the

county was transformed into a bustling, semi-industrial area.
Already a dense and congested region, Zeytinburnu was
heavily damaged in the 1999 Istanbul earthquake and became
a pilot region for the Earthquake Master Plan of Istanbul.5
During execution of the plan, reinforcement and destruction
of buildings occurred simultaneously. Due to the lack of a
proper relocation scheme, low-income groups from the region
were relocated to other parts of the Marmara Region without
infrastructure or means of livelihood.6 This situation was
further exacerbated by the 2003 economic crisis, ultimately
affecting more than 300,000 residents.

socio
The Participation Process

Kusaslan negotiated the feasibility of the project with

the Zeytinburnu Municipality Consultant, Vice Mayor, and
Mayor. They were enthusiastic about the idea and offered to
conduct a poll in collaboration with a sociologist. Kusaslan
worked closely with the sociologist as well as a historian, a city
planner, and a dweller-rights activist group7 to design the poll.
Along with assistants from the Visual Arts
Directorate, Kusaslan presented the project to
287 dwellers in the county Fig. 3 . This group
constituted a representative sample of Turkish
society, including minority groups, making
the survey an effective means to understand
the effects of urban transformation on
Zeytinburnus residents.
The Visual Arts Directorate provided a
space in their offices for community meetings,
FIG. 3 A participant encountering the project.
but the residents felt uncomfortable in the
government setting due to a common fear of
urban transformation and relocation regulations.
Ultimately, meetings were held in a bakery.8 In this comfortable
setting, those whose voices are often silenced by fear were able
to speak publicly through models, drawings, and debates on

101

8 urban and housing issues Fig. 4 . Despite independent funding,
Bakeries, as well as coffeehouses, have a
historical social importance for meetings
in Turkish society.
9
Feyzan Erkip, Global Transformations
Versus Local Dynamics in Istanbul
Planning in a Fragmented Metropolis,
Cities 17, no. 5 (2000): 374.
thresholds 40
FIG. 4 Community charrette meetings.
Esen Gke zdamar
the process was interrupted by the Municipalitys decision to
withdraw from the project. The Mayor rejected the project
based on a 10% abstaining groupwhich consisted mostly of
homemakers who based their decision on influence from their
spouses. About 2% of the abstaining group had no children and
their decision was based on possible noise from the children
in the proposed playground. The remaining 8% was unable to
take the poll as they were hesitant about their future. There
was speculation, however, that this group, in actuality, was
afraid of breaking advantageous connections
with the Municipality.
Art, Architecture and
Social Change
Kusaslan attempted to link dwellers
to their environment through political
dynamics of the city, and ended up
succeeding in exposing a political and
cultural narrative on the boundary
between the urban and class isolation.
Migration and poor planning tends to
change urban space, and the processes
of relocation tend to exacerbate changes
such as class isolation. As Feyzan Erkip
states, the 1980s saw the development
of these sorts of new narratives in the urban landscape:
When controlling power over land development and use was
transferred to greater and district municipalities, this change
was expected to give way to the participation of planning
professionals at the local level. Now, it is clear that the new
distribution of power between central and local governments
made urban land more available for big construction companies
instead of squatters.9 The retraction of the Zeytinburnu
Municipality exhibits this narrative, as those with political
power voiced support for the project, yet their actions
proved contrary.
These narratives demonstrate that the public and,
in particular, architects can be marginalized with non-
participatory government decision-making. They are not
included in the process but, moreover, they do not desire to be
included in the process. Getting involved is regarded as a loss
of time for a hopeless struggle against rules. Here, only a small
group of architects become interested in these issues, such as
the participants of Play in the District. In order to challenge
102
 Mussels in Concrete

the slow, top-down relocation process, which has historically 10

resulted in a lack of space for debate, of exchanges of ideas,
and of productive friction, architects and artists have installed
transient, participatory spaces for gathering as an artistic
Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday
Life (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1984): 117.
11
Aykut Kksal, stanbul: Hazr Balam, Sanat

methodology. In line with Michel de Certeaus notion on the Dnyamz 78 (2000): 91-94.
12
development of a city through its social activity, movement of Nicolas Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics

people, and experience of creative practice,10 the narrative of (New York: Les Presses Du Reel, 2002): 26.
Consider also Bourriauds notion of spector
the urban is shaped by the elements of the urban entity itself. participation as theorized within art group

Similarly, as Turkish architect and art critic Aykut Fluxuss happenings and performances.

Kksal suggests, the city is not designed and finished but,

rather, transitory and temporary. He argues that the city
in these circumstances is a non-place,11 due to variable
spatial contexts and multiple realities. The city dynamically
reconstructs itself through these flows between autonomous
entities, and transforms its elements by articulating them
with their changing relation to the whole. Barriers between
the autonomous art object and urban space are broken down
with contemporary artistic methodologies and with urban
modernity. Art has become a tool for interrogative architectural
practice. Kusaslans project demonstrates the diminishing
barriers between the built and the unbuilt environment.
The roles of planner and dweller blur, reflecting Nicolas
Bourriauds idea of transitivity as the tangible property of the

socio
artwork.12 The transitivity of the art project creates a more
reliable background for approaching the dweller, since it is
not perceived as a concrete architectural project. This idea
of approaching the spectator by demolishing the boundaries
between art and architecture is intrinsic to Kusaslans project.
In Play in the District, the governments legitimating of
the lack-of-land protection laws is forced to reconcile with the
dwellers observation of irrational urban planning in the county.
The contradiction between the governments declaration that
an abstaining group opposed urban transformation and the
fact that the majority of those living in the area are ignored
becomes evident. The project suggests that one way architects
and artists can react or oppose abuses of power is through
linking art, architecture, and urban planning.
Today, the construction of housing is viewed as the most
important tool toward the reconstruction of Istanbul as a global
city. Through the construction of housing, the government and
developers try to give an identity to new areas. Shortcomings
that might be addressed through participation, however,
still appears to be politically unfeasible. Furthermore, the
city requires more than housing developmentit requires
a fundamental shift in sociocultural understanding. Urban
transformation, detached from social structure, needs to be
taken as a new transdisciplinary strategy where the participants

103
 Esen Gke zdamar

are transformed into perceivers. Activist projects, such as Play in

the District, a beginning for revealing social issues from multiple
perspectivesthat of the dweller, the planner, and urban
authorities. Here, participation is more than an exchange of
the roles, but one in which dwellers have the capacity to take
a fundamental role in changing their environment.
thresholds 40

The project is used courtesy of Arzu Kusaslan

and the stanbul 2010 European Capital of
Culture Visual Arts Directorate. Financial
support for the work was provided by the
stanbul 2010 European Capital of Culture
Visual Arts Directorate. All images are by the
author. The author would also like to thank
Jonathan Crisman and Irina Chernyakova
for their comments and guidance.

***
Esen Gke zdamar is Assistant
Professor of Architecture at stanbul
Arel University. She received her PhD
in Architectural Design from Istanbul
Technical University in 2011. Currently,
her research areas are transdisciplinarity,
contemporary paradigms, visual art
and culture, and correlations between
social sciences, art, philosophy, and
scientific knowledge.

104
Participation
and/or
Criticality?
Thoughts on an
Architectural Practice
for Urban Change

Kenny Cupers and Markus Miessen

 Kenny Cupers and Markus Miessen
Kenny Cupers
If an increasing number of commentators
declare both partici-pation and criticality as
having run out of steam, how then are we to
rethink social and political engagement in art
and architecture today? Public participation
over the past half-century has been mobilized
by ideals with almost universal attraction:
democracy, social justice, self-determination.
Who can claim to be against such basic
principles? But because of its apparent
universality, many have recently argued
that participation is acutely flawedboth
conceptually and practically. The tyranny of
participation has been critiqued in fields as
diverse as development studies and the visual
arts.1 In a similar way, the notion of criticality
has been found in crisis. With the demise of
the once fashionable Critical Theory in cultural
production, some have claimed that the
main tools of criticality have been crippled.2
The question, then, is how to harness the
concepts of participation and criticality in
thresholds 40
a contemporary practice that wishes to be
socially and politically engaged.
Markus Miessen
I propose a post-consensual practice
one that is no longer reliant on ill-defined
modes of operating within politically
complex and consensus-driven groups, but
instead calls into question the innocence of
participation. The notion of participation is at
a point of transitionwithin politics, within the
Left, within spatial practices, and especially
within architecture as its tangible and most
clearly defined product. Participation has
typically been read through romantic notions
of negotiation, inclusion, and democratic
decision-making. However, it is precisely
1 See Uma Kothari and Bill Cooke, Participation: The New
Tyranny? (New York: Zed Books, 2001). See also, Claire
Bishop, Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics, October 110
(2004): 51-79.
2 See Robert Somol and Sarah Whiting, Notes Around the
Doppler Effect and Other Moods of Modernism, Perspecta,
no. 33 (2002): 72-77; Michael Speaks, After Theory,
Architectural Record (June 2005): 72-75; George Baird,
Criticality and Its Discontents, Harvard Design Magazine,
no. 21 (Fall 2004/Winter 2005): 16-21; and Reinhold Martin,
Critical of What? Toward a Utopian Realism, Harvard Design
Magazine, no. 22 (Spring/Summer 2005): 1-5.
this unquestioned mode of inclusionused
by politicians as one of never-ending retail
politicsthat precludes critical results. I
am instead promoting a conflictual model
of participation: one that opposes the herd
mentality of consensus and that has to
assumeat timesnon-physical violence,
dissensus, and singular, first-person decision-
making in order to produce change. This is an
ongoing project. I am attempting to open up
a new language of practice by essentially
presenting architectural thinking as method.
KC
In order to chart new ways of how
participation can produce critical alternatives,
perhaps we should begin by asking how
it became the new tyranny. Why can
participation be so easily explained as the
oil of a democratic political machinery that
also happens to work remarkably well with
global capitalism? Are architects to blame,
who sniff dismissively when they hear calls
for participation, pointing at the unimaginative
architecture it has proven to produce?
I think it is a mistake to cast participation
solely as the emancipating response from
below to the evils of authoritarianism. This
myth overshadows the historical forces
that gave rise to participatory processes
in architecture and urban planning. The
rhetoric of participation was hardly born on
the barricades of May 1968. By that time, it
had already become a mainstream political
idea in the context of postwar economic
development and of a budding consumer
culture in the social-democratic West. It was
fostered from above, by state policy-
makers and technocrats as much as by the
social movements subsequently idealized
by leftist intellectuals. If it is true that power
cannot be given, then the institution-alization
of participation since the 1970scertainly
in the French contexthardly amounts to
the distribution of power its advocates
claim it to be. Yet, in architecture, calls for
participation actually did correspond to a
critical rethinking of the discipline. It was at
a point in time when professional ideologies
and ruling beliefs were being dismantled and
architectures social and political role came
106
 Participation and/or Criticality?
to be fundamentally questioned. And it is
precisely at this opening up of architectures
critical potential where the importance of
participation lies today.
MM
This was one of the starting
points of my inquiry into contemporary forms
of participatory practiceand, especially,
politicians love affair with it. As demonstrated
by the UKs New Labour and the Dutch Polder
Model, participation has produced a very
comfortable situation in which politicians have
FIG. 1
managed to withdraw from their responsibility
as elected representatives of the general public.
I would call this process the outsourcing
of responsibility. I am not advocating for this
format of participation, based on the idea
of bottom-up democratic principles of an
all-inclusive congregation around a table.
Rather, I am trying to understand the opposite:
a first-person approach to critical engagement
in which the individualin our case, the
architectacts upon an urge for political and
social responsibility in ones practice.
Nothing confounds me more than
that over the last decade everyone started
claiming to be some sort of participatory
architectural social worker. There are,
however, a few examples that demonstrate
this critical participation that interests me.
There is the Winter School Middle East and the
European Kunsthalle, which serve as de facto
cases in which some of these issues have
been scrutinized in their respective
contexts. These cases exemplify a mode
of practice with an end toward the build-
ing up of independent, small-scale institutions
as alternatives to public art institutions and
franchised regional academies Fig. 1 .
3 For more on these interventions, see The Winter School Middle
East, http://www.winterschoolmiddleeast.org; Vanessa Joan
Mller and Astrid Wege, European Kunsthalle 2005 2006 2007
(Cologne: European Kunsthalle, 2007); Markus Miessen, East
Coast Europe (Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2008); Shumon Basar,
Antonia Carver, and Markus Miessen, eds., With/Without:
Spatial Products, Politics and Practices in the Middle East
(New York: Bidoun, 2007).
107
W
 ebsite of The Winter School Middle East, founded and
directed by Markus Miessen with co-director Kuwait
Zahra Ali Baba. See www.winterschoolmiddleeast.org.
I would also like to touch upon the
experience of institutionalizing myself in
formal political settings on a governmental
scale, through East Coast Europe,a project
commissioned by the Govern-ment of Slovenia
during Slovenias presidency of the European
Council in 2008, and through a research project
commissioned by the Dubai government
socio
think tank Moutamarat that resulted in the
publication With/Without: Spatial Products,
Politics and Practices in the Middle East. Both
of these projects attempted to understand
space as something that is inherently
imagined and, consequently, produced and
acted upon as a result of this imaginary. In the
case of East Coast Europe, this was proposed
through a fictional territorial shift, and in the
case of With/Without, it was through producing
a counter-reading of spatial practices in the
Middle East to that of Al Manakh. We were
interested in a narrative approach on the scale
and level of the street, to understand everyday
practices and how they formulate and shape
change. Rather than prescribing a recipe,
this opens up a field of potential departures
for participants. Indeed, this is what sets the
architects approach apart from other fields of
knowledge: models are seen to be a platform
for operation, for moving beyond those very
models, rather than findings or truths in and
of themselves. We are providing a common
starting point from where we can begin to
disagree a theory of how to participate,
without squinting at constituencies or voters
but, rather, instigating critical change.3
 Kenny Cupers and Markus Miessen
KC
Both as a political theory and a spatial
practice, participation implies a series of
fundamental preconditions: a neutral ground
for participants to meet; the definition of a
community, constituents, or interest groups;
a shared place; a common project. None of
these apply in the volatility of contemporary
urban space. Take for instance the mundane
case of street vending Fig. 2 . In cities like
Los Angeles, where street sales are banned
outright and the majority of the more than
ten thousand vendors are Central- and
thresholds 40
FIG. 2 S
 treet vending in Los Angeles. Photo courtesy of and copyright Kenny Cupers.
Latin-American, this everyday urban practice
is as much about the right to the city
as it is about the contested nature of the
citys identity.4 Compared to the organized
regulation of vending in New York City, LA
vendors exceptional mobilityat once
urban and transnationalrenders traditional
notions of engagement, such as stable
community organization or struggle based on
conventional notions of citizenship, largely
obsolete. Not surprisingly, participatory
planning attempts have thus far failed to
free vendors from the plight of enforcement.
Vendors mobility makes it impossible
to assume an a priori political project or
participatory process in which design can
be involved. We need to first ask whose
108
agency can be involved, in what quality,
and to what effect. In the context of widely
accepted xenophobia and increasing
economic precariousness, the design of new
vending cartswhich has been architects
first instinctive responseappears as an
almost laughably impotent gesture.5 A better
response is to ask where design should enter
into such contested spatial conditions.
Meanwhile, a new generation of middle-
class entrepreneurs and gourmet chefs
have begun to alter the dominant cultural
perception of street vending with their
upscale treatsfrom organic
ice cream to Korean-Mexican
fusion. In the same way,
the arrival of New Yorks
Vendy Awardsa yearly
awards event for street
foodin Los Angeles is
another occasion promising
to lift some of the stigma that
tends to categorize Latino
food vending as dirty or
poor. By developing forms
of cultural production and
consumption that creatively
destroy the dominant public
perceptions of street vending
as out of place, designers
might locate openings for
transforming vendors urban
imaginary altogether. This
fundamentally superficial
approach, ironically, is able to cut across the
very core of some of the citys social issues.
It is at once aesthetic and political, superficial
and transformative, critical and participatory.
MM
I absolutely agree with you. When it
comes to participatory approaches, one needs
to be aware that they are often based in a
certain romanticism. Such nostalgic longing
is very dangerous as it is neither pro-active
nor propositional. It does not produce or make
4 See Henri Lefebvre, Le droit la ville (Paris: Anthropos, 1968).
5 See John Chase, Margaret Crawford, and John Kaliski,
Everyday Urbanism (New York: Monacelli, 1999).
 Participation and/or Criticality?
decisions, but simply reflects the status quo.
While we still need critical reflection, I strongly
believe that in order to practice, one also
needs to be projective.
My proposed model of the crossbench
practitioner encourages an uncalled
participator who is not limited by existing
protocols, and who enters the arena with
nothing but creative intellect and the will
to generate change.6 I am arguing here
for an inversion of participation, a model
beyond modes of consensus. Instead of
reading participation as the charitable
savior of political struggle, I prefer to reflect
and act upon the limits and traps of its real
motivations. Rather than breeding the next
generation of consensual facilitators and
mediators, I argue for allowing conflict as an
enabling force. Through a conflictual mode,
participation is no longer a process by which
others are invited in, but becomes a means
of acting without mandate, as an uninvited
irritant, a forced entry into fields of knowledge
that might benefit from exterior thinking. Some-
times democracy must be avoided at all costs.
KC
I would not characterize our
current condition at all as Harmonistan.7
In any newspaper on any given day, I see
extremes of confict and oppositionthe
only exception is the culture section. It is
disappointing to see how pacified cultural
production is today in the face of global
conflict and catastrophe, and in this sense,
I do agree with you about the need for
dissensus. I am still surprised at how inviting
your friends for pad thai in an art gallery
has been celebrated as a participatory,
progressive, or critical form of art.8 This
retreat from the social world by mimicking it
in the art gallery has parallels in architectural
production. Despite the rise of sustainability
as a new promise for architectures societal
relevance, architecture culture continues to
shy away from negotiation with complex
realities for, instead, the solitary games
of form. This threatens to perpetuate the
fallacies of architectural autonomy while
undoing it of even the last remnants of
critique. Rather than simply inserting
participation as the redeeming element in
such a practice, we need to come up with
alternative ways of doing and thinking about
architecture. As much as the past generation
has theorized architectural autonomythe
ghost of which is more than alive in the
elite academic institutions of the Northeast
UScurrent architectural thinkers should
theorize conflict, mediation, negotiation, and
compromise. That said, I am not proposing
to replace outright the architect-as-form-
maker with the architect-as-mediator. We
need to ask how experimentation is both
an architectural and a social process. It
is remarkable how little the discipline is
currently interested in the interrelations of
spatial form and social dynamics. My current
research attempts to provide a historical and
theoretical perspective to such concerns by
looking at architectures encounter with the
social sciences in the construction of mass
housing and new towns, and the emergence
of paradigms such as programming,
participatory planning, and user-oriented
socio
design in the era of the postwar welfare state.9
I think we can change architectural production
today by offering tools for rethinking archi-
tectures historically situated social agency.
What we have not touched upon so far is
the distinction between architecture and art
in this critical and projective practice. Art is
often said to offer more potential for criticality
as it seems more free than architecture from
the depend-encies and compromises of
intervention. At the same time, some strands
of socially engaged or political art today
offer little more than a set of allusions whose
ultimate effect is a surplus of art market
capital. Markus, your practice inscribes itself
in what has been called critical spatial
practicewhich is neither easily subsumed
within the categories of art or architecture,
6 See Markus Miessen, The Nightmare of Participation:
Crossbench Praxis as A Mode of Criticality (Berlin: Sternberg
Press, 2010).
7 Ibid.
8 See Bishop, Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics.
9 See Kenny Cupers, Designing Social Life: The Urbanism of
the Grands Ensembles, Positions: On Modern Architecture and
Urbanism/Histories and Theories, no. 1 (Spring 2010).
109
 Kenny Cupers and Markus Miessen

nor within social or cultural activism. Would
you agree that it is more fruitful to position
yourself still more in the visual arts and new
cultural industries, than in the traditional
outlets of architectural production? Do
these more fluid realms have more critical
potential than that of architectural culture?
Or is critical spatial practice ultimately
less powerful than architecture because it
is often more about media than about actual
intervention in the spaces of everyday life?
MM
I would not position myself more in the
visual arts than in architecture. I find this
distinction fairly problematic. It raises the
issue of interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary
approaches, which I think, by now, we are
beyond.10 We should think about architecture
more as an open field or a territory of tools
which one can access through collaborative
practice. We are facing what I would call a
thresholds 40
post-disciplinary form of spatial practice,
one which no longer understands itself as
a form of cultural activism as in the 60s or
70s, but also one which understands the
plethora of tools available in order to apply
them in an appropriate context. What you are
describing here is precisely the conservative
view of architecture that often prevents it
from generating change: that architecture, by
default, is understood as a physical practice.
I do not believe this holds trueI actually
think it never did. An alternative practice must
acknowledge thisand this is, for the lack of
a better word or term, what I would call critical
spatial practice Fig. 3 .
Architecture is not a discipline that
necessarily has a scale or professional body
but, rather, is something that one doesit is
a practice. Most architects, from my point of
view, do not produce architecture at all.
They produce buildings, sometime lame,
sometimes otherwise.

 arkus Miessen, The Nightmare of Participation: Crossbench Praxis as a Mode of Criticality (Berlin: Sternberg
FIG. 3 M
Press, 2010). Photo by Hannes Grassegger.

110
 Participation and/or Criticality?

KC within the territory of the production of

I agree with the need to move beyond spaceit is just that it is transgressing
these often outmoded distinctions, but it its former professional borders. In fact,
is wishful thinking to generally say we are this act of opening up practice beyond
facing a post-disciplinary form of practice. artificial borders may be the very essence
Rather than dividing these realms in a of critical participation.
normative way, I am interested in under-
standing the mechanisms of distinction that
actually exist and the politics they set up.
Divisions between art and architecture
and between architecture and the built
environmentcontinue to structure not only
our ways of thinking but also practice itself.
Who benefits from these distinctions, or
benefits from transgressing them? There
seems to be an inherent ambiguity in what
you call critical spatial practice, which on
the onehand opens up architecture to the
multitude of social or spatial practices that
make up peoples lives, while on the other
hand continues to celebrate authorship and
intentionality in a neoliberal and entrepre-
neurial manner. While it threatensto dress
these conservative notions in a more

socio
fashionable cloak, this notion of critical spatial
practice is most promising when it is able
to allow new forms of collectivity to emerge.
This is where the real politics of contemporary
practice lienot in the mimicry of the political
served up by the Biennale industry, but in the
messiness of the contemporary city.

MM
Sure, at the end of the day, critical
spatial practice is simply acknowledging the
fact that architects are not the only actors
or protagonists in a vast territory called
the production of space. 11 Critical spatial
practice attempts to undo this myth and tries
to open up a field for debate, which hopefully
will unpack different sets of knowledge.
To be honest, I dont think that this way of
working is any more individualist, neoliberal, or
entrepreneurial than any other job-description

10 See, for example, Mark Linder, TRANSdisciplinarity, Hunch,

no. 9 (2005).
11 See Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space (Oxford, UK:
Blackwell, 1991).

111
 Kenny Cupers and Markus Miessen
thresholds 40

Markus Miessen with Kenny Cupers conducting the Urban States The Space of Politics
workshop and symposium at USC, Los Angeles, August 2011.

***
Kenny Cupers teaches architectural history, theory, and urban
studies at the University at Buffalo, where he was the 2010-
11 Reyner Banham Fellow. He received his PhD from Harvard
University. Forthcoming books include The Social Project:
Modern Architecture, Social Science, and the Postwar Suburbs in
France, Paris: Life Forms, and Use Matters: An Alternative History
of Architecture (Routledge, 2013).

Markus Miessen is an architect, spatial consultant, and writer,

operating from his practice Studio Miessen. He is also Visiting
Professor of Critical Spatial Practice at Staatliche Hochschule
fr Bildende Knste, Stdelschule. He received his BArch
from Glasgow School of Art, DiplHons from the Architectural
Association, MRes from the London Consortium, and is currently
a PhD candidate at Goldsmiths College.

Both have been published in collaboration and individually in

numerous journals and books.

112
 The
Sluipweg
and the
History
of Death
Mark Jarzombek
 Mark Jarzombek

Before the nineteenth century, people itineraries that pointed out the cemeterys
in Europe were buried in church plots if architectural features and the tombs of
they could afford it; otherwise, they were illustrious personages.2 On Sunday afternoons,
consigned to paupers graves or charnel families would stretch out a blanket for a
houses. Napoleon, in his effort to exalt the picnic. The following lines, found penciled on
idealism of the empire and garner support the cemeteries terrace wall in 1813, convey
among the military, changed the rules. His the sentiment:
1804 Imperial Decree on
Burials ordered that each At this peaceful site, amid trees and flowers,
person be buried separately. Sorrows and laments come to cry their tears:
A coffin was mandatory, Here they can find a sympathetic shade:
and everyone had the Death hides from their eyes its hideous scythe.
right to erect a tombstone As it spreads its subjects throughout a vast garden:
over a loved ones grave. For the home of the dead has become a new Eden. 3
If a soldier fought for the
nation, the nation would provide for the burial But there was a Faustian deal. Graves
and cemetery plot free of charge. Death was were to last only five years unless the plot was
in essence democratized and secularized; bought by the relatives of the deceased. In
it was also ennobled. Soldiers were seen as other words, the body that began its journey
heroes, and their caskets were draped with to the hereafter as a part of the public sphere
the national flag. Pre Lachaise, a garden was thrust back into private hands. And
thresholds 40

necropolis in the hilly suburbs of Paris that worse yet, if no family members showed
was laid out in the same year as the decree, up to claim the body, it and its grave were
was the prototype of the new cemetery design. unceremoniously made to disappear. With
It was envisioned as an Elysian Field, the the stroke of a clock the body changed from
mythological resting place of heroes and the a glorious metaphysical proposition evoking
virtuous. Trees which were once frowned upon the grandeur of civic participation to a dusty
in cemeteries as they were thought to restrict burden. All this meant that there were two
the circulation of air were now introduced deaths; the first one guaranteed a mixture of
to serve as a somber and religious veil over public acclaim and heavenly bliss; the second
the grounds.1 Tombstones were no longer onefive years laterpromised, or at least
decorated with skull and bones indicating the threatened, total obscurity. Eternal dignity, as
immanent and perhaps not all too pleasant it turned out, was a short-lived affair.
day of reckoning, as had been the case for First at Pre Lachaise then in places
centuries, but adorned with smiling angels. across Europe, the dualand one should say
By 1825, guidebooks published maps with bizarrenature of modern death slowly came
into shape with its strongest legacy today in
Germany, France, Sweden, and Holland. In
Germany, plots are usually rented for twenty,
sometimes thirty years, with the possibility
of an extension. In the Netherlands, the dead
1 Richard Etlin, The Architecture of Death:the Transformation
are usually buried for ten years and after that
of the Cemetery in Eighteenth-Century Paris (Cambridge, the family must rent the plot if they want it
MA:The MIT Press,1984), 300.
2 Margaret Fields Denton, Death in French Arcady: Nicolas
to be preserved. If the rent is not forthcoming
Poussins The Arcadian Shepherds and Burial Reform in France in either country by the periods expiration, a
c. 1800, Eighteenth-Century Studies 36, no. 2 (Winter 2003):
195-216.
backhoe is brought in, the remains removed,
3 Etlin, Architecture of Death, 303. and the process starts over again for a new body.

114
 The Sluipweg and the History of Death
Hans van Houwelingens Sluipweg
a path made up of tombstones laid flat on
the groundis a poignant critique of this
cultural phenomenon. The full title of the
construction is Sluipweg, waarlangs de dood
heeft weten te ontsnappen which translates
into something like Secret path, along which
death was able to escape. I will try to unravel
the meaning of this enigmatic phrase, showing
that we have to understand Sluipweg as a
puzzle created out of an exchange between
old and new epistemological regimes. What it
represents can be summarized best as a post-
metaphysical practice of commemoration that
challenges the lingering tendency to put death
in the pretend landscape of a garden cemetery.
Hans van Houwelingen, born in 1957,
is a Dutch artist who has realized various
high-profile art projects within the public
domain, each distinguished by intense socio-
political concern. Here his focus is on the
cultural construction of death. On the surface,
the project seems very much like a repeat
of the Elysian cemeteries of old: it is located
along the top of an embankment inside a
Defense Line of Amsterdam fort that is about
thirteen kilometers to the west of the city.
Here, however, there are no bodies. Those
have long since disappeared from the public
cemeteries. The tombstones that make up
this path were all donated by individuals who
kept the stones of their relatives in a basement
or garage once they had been removed from
the cemetery. This reuse was made possible
because of a recent Dutch law clarifying that
tombstones were the property of those who
commissioned them, allowing family members
to do whatever they wanted with them.4 In
essence, Houwelingens project saves these
stones and returns them to the public domain.
The body may not have found its final resting
place, but its tombstone has, laid flat on the
ground as a semiotic reference to the absent
body. By laying the stones flat on the ground,
Houwelingen decommissioned the stones as
grave-markers. Thus even though the site is
park-like, and a military ground to boot, the
re-enactment of death is not associated with
sorry and personal grief. There are no tears.
Houwelingens project is, therefore,
much more than just a salvage operation. The
peculiarities of the site play a critical role for
the fortification systemthis is not just any
public space. The Defense Line, which extends
135 km around the city and consists of a series
of dykes, canals, and forts, and which was
initiated by King William I in 1815 to defend
Holland against invasion, became a UNESCO
World Heritage site in 1996. It was found
to have what UNESCO calls Outstanding
Universal Value, which means that it has,
according to the official definition of that term,
a cultural and/or natural significance which is
so exceptional as to transcend national bound-
aries and to be of common importance for
present and future generations of all humanity.5
Lurking behind this statement is the
destruction during WWII of cathedrals,
palaces, and monuments, the shock of which
produced a movement that, beginning in the
socio
1950s, culminated in the 1972 Convention
Concerning the Protection of the World
Cultural and Natural Heritage which
established the idea of Outstanding Universal
Value. One by one, monuments came to be
added to what is now called the World Heritage
List. Over nine hundred monuments are
currently on the list, monuments which have
a protective bubble around them that all
parties to the United Nations are expected
to respect. In a world of fractured political,
national, and religious identities, these sites, in
theory at least, represent the only places were
the universal ideal of humanitysuch as it
iscan still be championed. World Heritage
sites are islands of permanence, both physically
and legally.
4 Greg Roumeliotis, Do What You Like With Your Tombstone,
Reuters, January 31, 2011.
5 Matthias Ripp, Outstanding Universal Value, Worldheritage
Forum, January 13, 2006.
115
 Mark Jarzombek
thresholds 40

116
The Sluipweg and the History of Death

socio

117
 Mark Jarzombek
Placing the Sluipweg within this
political, temporal environment is the
first step to understanding the inner logic
of Houwelingens project. The ultimate
impermanence of modern deathdefined by a
state-imposed boundednessis here seemingly
rectified. What the modern cemetery promised
but would not deliver, namely eternal rest, is
finally being provided. It is a complex form of
eternal rest, for death has been placed within
the realm of a concept of humanity that is
just as abstract, placeless, and vacuous as it
supposedly permanent.
Again, there was a quid pro quo: the
tombstones, in order to be embraced by
UNESCOs alternate metaphysics, are stripped
of their memorial status. They are no longer
monuments but alienated memories of
a disembodied reality. The fact that one is
supposed to walk on the stones reinforces
this condition and, indeed, the more that
people traverse the path, the more the wear
on the surface will erase the names etched in
the stones, leaving only the most ghostly of
traces. The final condition is when the physical
residue of memory is fully dematerialized.
The slow erasure of memory stands in contrast
to the brutal punctuation of time when the
stones were cast off of the public cemeteries as
just so much excess baggage.
The irony lies in the fact that by the
time the fortifications came to be completed,
they had become obsolete and were in fact
never used militarily. This point was lost on
the UNESCO committee who celebrated the
defenses as an example of the Dutch genius
for hydraulic engineering:
6 Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural
and Natural Heritage, Report WHC-96/CONF.20l/21 (Paris:
UNESCO, March 10, 1997), 71-2.
The site is of outstanding
universal value as it is an
exceptional example of an
extensive integrated defence
system of the modern period
which has survived intact
and well conserved since
it was created in the later
19th century. It is also
notable for the unique way
in which the Dutch genius
for hydraulic engineering
has been incorporated into
the defences of the nations
capital city. 6
It would be more accurate to claim that
the Defense Line should be preserved as a folly
commemorating nationalist pretenses. There
was never any real death associated with the
site, only a type of nation-sponsored longing
for death. In that context, as the messages on
the tombstones slowly wear away, the Defense
Line becomes the perfect place to meditate
on the thematics of erasure in the modern
post-Enlightenment, post-WWII world. What
at first might seem a simulation of death turns
out to be the production of deathlessness.
What is being constructed for the
visitor by the Sluipweg is, therefore, not a
conventional commemoration. If the modern
idea of death is built around the memorial
placed within the domain of human history
and if the postmodern idea of death is built
around the principle of loss placed with
the domain of human emotions, we have
here a construction that undoes both. It
is a project that brings into awareness the
complex processes of death-making in both
the modern and postmodern world. Death is
restored and evacuated; it is returned to the
temporal present and allowed to point to an
otherworldly future. It is dematerialized into a
philosophical abstraction and materialized into
the form of stone rubbed smooth by passers-by.
There is yet another twist in Sluipwegs
slippery logic. Because this is not Dutch
118
 The Sluipweg and the History of Death
ground, but a United Nations quasi-
demilitarized, international zone that is
preserved in the name of humanity, the
tombstones cannot represent Dutch citizens.
So what type of person do they represent,
at least in the period before their names
become illegible?
The word civilian came into currency
during the English colonial period in the mid-
nineteenth century to refer to the English-
born administrative personnel generally
referred to as civil servants, including their
families who often lived permanently in India.
Even so, it was a relatively rare word until
the second half of the twentieth century. It
was given its modern definition at the Fourth
Geneva Convention (1949-50) in the wake of
the horrors of WWII. The implicit hypothesis
of the convention was that the military and
the civilian worlds exist in two different plains
of reality. The military produces a disruption
in the fabric of history, whereas the civilian
embodies social continuity and as such
needs to be protected during war as much as
possible. Civilians were viewed as societys
constitutive fabric existing in a natural state
of peacefulness. After hostilities were over,
civilians were, therefore, to be the essential
component of a return to normalcy.
The post-WWII concept of a civilian
challenged the traditional concept of the
citizen that arose after the Napoleonic era
when the rights and obligations of citizenship
concomitant with the newly emerging nation-
state required that a member of that state take
a stance as to wartime participation. Whereas
a citizen was by definition a soldier, whether
in spirit or reality, a post-WWII civilian was
seen as a non-combatant living within the
nation-state but outside the reach of its
ideological claims. Whereas the nation-state as
it was understood in the nineteenth century
implicated all its citizens in its activities, the
contemporary nation-state, from the point of
view of the UN, is split between its military
and non-military populations. Furthermore,
whereas the citizen is protected only by his
or her government, the civilian has, at least
conceptually, the protection of international law.
But whereas a civilian death is by
definition marked as a tragedy, the Sluipweg
provides an alternative: though death is
civilianized, it is not part of any particular
tragedy. It remains poignant nonetheless, in
that this death is released from the conceptual
tyranny of citizenship.
There is an obvious historical parallel
between the post-WWII creation of the
civilian and its subsequent protection by
international law, and the post-WWII creation
of the World Heritage List and the protection
of monuments whose value ostensibly
transcends national boundaries. At UNESCO
property 759, the official designation of
the Amsterdam Defense Line, these two
vectors intersect. Just as the people who are
memorialized on the stones of the Sluipweg
are being eternalized and protected within
the conceptual enclave of a monument that
represents all of humanity, they are no longer
socio
Dutch citizens but civilians freed from the
universal obligation to be, in death, a national
citizen. In turning the stones flat, the artist is
not only returning the stone from private to
public and from metaphysical to temporal,
but also shifting the political ground on which
the stones rest, from national to universal.
It is clear that this multifaceted act of
constructingand perhaps deconstructing
the concept of death is both intimate and
historically poignant.
Though the institutions of the state and
of religion still need their monuments as
tokens to their long-proclaimed association
with metaphysics, it is clear that Sluipweg
is different. This is neither a memorial that
yet again elevates death onto the plateau of
cultural memory, nor a counter-memorial that
focuses on the darker modalities of death in
the modern world. It is a rare example of a
post-metaphysical practice of commemoration
for it does not seek out the standard duality
of hero and victim. Instead, as the names wear
away, the stones give up their ghost. Dust to
119
 Mark Jarzombek

dust, stone to stone. Their position as semiotic

stand-ins for the universal is thus transitory.
Memories that have been disembodied and
dislocated are ultimately disappeared, and
as such the Sluipweg holds the inevitable
metaphysics of death within the framework
of quotation marks. What is, after all, the
universality of death when body and memory
have been separated each in their own way
along different historical vectors? Sluipweg
does not answer the question but it does force
us to think through the terms by which death
is produced and understood. Sluipweg is thus
a path where death is finally given at least a
chance to make its escape.
thresholds 40

Photos courtesy Hans van Houwelingen.

***
Mark Jarzombek is Professor of the History and Theory of
Architecture and Associate Dean in MITs School of Architecture
and Planning. He received his Diploma from the ETH in 1980 and
his PhD from MIT in 1986. He was a CASVA fellow (1985), Post-
doctoral Resident Fellow at the J. Paul Getty Center (1986), a
fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study (1993), at the Canadian
Center for Architecture (2001), and at the Sterling and Francine
Clark Art Institute (2005), and has published numerous books
and articles in a variety of journals.

120
 Sculpture Field

Extra
Room:
What if we lived in
a society where our every
thought was public?

Gunnar Green and Bernhard Hopfengrtner

 Gunnar Green and Bernhard Hopfengrtner
How will the scientific discoveries about
the workings of the human brain affect the
way we perceive ourselves? Will we fall back
into a more functionalist understanding of
the human, as developed in the nineteenth
century? During the past several years, cultural
implications of neuro-technologies have been
widely discussed in the press Fig. 1 .
In 2009, Wired published an article
about a conviction for murder in India based
on brainwave patterns. Detectives showed
photographs of the crime scene to the suspect
and claimed that the brainwaves produced
proved the suspects experiential knowledge
of the images.1 At the same time, a story about
the usage of MRI scanners for job interviews
spread across blogs. A Dutch scientist claimed
that using this technique would be possible
and practicable within five years.2 How will
neuro-technologies transform our culture
and the way we think about ourselves and
about others?3 And how can we approach and
thresholds 40
explore this topic as designers? Extra Room
investigates the very extreme of possible
developments and asks: What if we lived in a
society where our every thought was public?
Extra Room is a design project combining
scale models and narrative elements, that
reflects on how advances in neuroscience and
technology might affect our self-perception.
The Extra Room exists in an imaginary world
where technology has been developed to
read the human mind. As the mind becomes
transparent in this world, a new necessity of
protective self-discipline emerges. Utilizing
the effects of sensory deprivation and methods
of military interrogation, the room enables
subjects to adjust their thinking and beliefs.
The Extra Room, a reverse-disciplinary
architecture, is built into the basement of a
multi-story building where it is shared by the
houses inhabitants Fig. 2 .
The dimensions are three meters by four
meters; it is soundproof, carpeted, windowless,
and has only one door.4 The surfaces are
tiltedsuch that there are no horizontal
floors or vertical wallsto prevent any spatial
orientation and to induce mental unrest Fig. 3 .5
Extra Room also includes a process people
that would subject themselves to, in order to
achieve desired psychological alterations. Using
the Extra Rooms sensory deprivation unit,
interrogation room, and prison cell, the process
itself is inspired by experiments on sensory
deprivation. As shown by Jack A. Vernon, after
spending 24 hours in a completely dark and
soundproof room, people who were subjected
to propaganda showed to be eight times more
susceptive compared to a control group.6 This
result leads to the possibility of using the
effect, mildly exaggerated, for the purpose
of self-induced mind control. The procedure
would be as follows: A person starts their
session in complete darkness Fig. 4 .
During the whole time, liquid nutrition
can be accessed through The Valve on the
wall inside the room Fig. 5 . Liquid nutrition is
chosen to eliminate the experience of time,
a consequence discrete food items such as
sandwiches would have. The Extra Room
also has a toilet Fig. 6 . After 36 hours with no
stimuli, the room lightens, and at this stage
the persons mind would be hungry for new
input. A speaker, The Prompter, cites the
desired alterations that have been programmed
in the room before entrance. This process of
repetitive recitation lasts for 12 hours and
ends with the opening of the door.
Extra Room is neither a prediction nor
a proposal for a psychological strategy for
the scenario of omnipresent mind reading
technologies. It aims to create an analogy
that refers to modern attempts to control the
individual in psychological experiments by the
military or through architecture. Architecture
provided an adequate visual language,
expressing the structural violence that would
emerge in a situation where technology
becomes potent enough to dissolve barriers
between ones internal processes and the
representation of ones self to others. Distorted
in shape, the Extra Room is hidden away in
the basement of a multi-story building and is
both a shared space for all the inhabitants and
122
 Extra Room

0 1m 5m

0 1m 5m

Fig. 1 The mediatization of neuro-technologies. Fig. 2 The location of the Extra Room in the basement.

socio
0 1m 5m

Fig. 3 Tilted surfaces to prevent spatial orientation. Fig. 4 Complete darkness, sensory deprivation.
0 1m 5m
0 1m 5m

Fig. 5 The Valve which provides liquid food. Fig. 6 The Extra Rooms only amenity: a toilet.

123
 Gunnar Green and Bernhard Hopfengrtner

7
thresholds 40

124
Extra Room

socio
10

Fig. 7 Physical model: the Extra Room.

Fig. 8 Physical model: the Extra Rooms interior.
Fig. 9 Physical model: the Valve.
Fig. 10 Physical model: the Extra Rooms toilet.

125
 Gunnar Green and Bernhard Hopfengrtner

a space that plays a role in but does not belong

to daily life. As Michel Foucault writes:

There are also, probably

in every culture, in every
civilization, real places ...
which are something like
counter-sites, a kind of
effectively enacted utopia
in which the real sites ... are
simultaneously represented,
contested, and inverted.
Places of this kind are outside
of all places, even though
it may be possible to indicate
their location in reality. 7

Many of these spaces exist and sometimes they

become cultural icons like the garden shed in
England, the fallout shelter in Switzerland, or
thresholds 40

the sauna in Finland, all of them Extra Rooms

telling specific stories about the cultures in
which they exist.8

Endnotes

1 Angela Saini, The Brain Police: Judging Murder with an MRI,

***
Gunnar Green holds degrees from the Royal College of Art in
London and the University of the Arts Berlin, and is a partner
at TheGreenEyl with Willy Sengewald, Dominik Schumacher,
Frdric Eyl, and Richard The. He has been published and
exhibited in Ars Electronica, Wired, and others.
Bernhard Hopfengrtner holds degrees from the Royal College
of Art in London and the Bauhaus-Universitt Weimar. His work
has been exhibited at the Wellcome Trust in London, MoMA,
and the National Museum of China in Beijing, among others.
Wired UK, June 2009.
2 Adriana Stuijt, Brain Scan Replaces Job Interview in 5 Years?
Next Nature (Blog), February 24, 2009, http://www.nextnature.
net/2009/02/brain-scan-replaces-job-interview-in-5-years/.
3 See Ervin Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life
(London: Penguin, 1990), 244.
4 See Tom Blanton, The CIA in Latin America, National
Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book, no. 27, March 14,
2000, http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB27/
index.html. In particular, see Document 3 from the same site,
CIA Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual (1983).
5 See Matthew Murphy, Glimpses of a Future Architecture,
in Did Someone Say Participate? ed. Markus Miessen and
Shumon Basar (Frankfurt: Revolver, 2006), 77.
6 See Jack A. Vernon, Inside the Black Room (New York: C. N.
Potter, 1963), 39.
7 Michel Foucault, Of Other Spaces, trans. Jay Miskowiec,
Diacritics 16, no. 1 (Spring 1986): 22-27.
8 Extra Room consists of a video, scale models, and
photographs. The video is accessible online at http://vimeo.
com/5564531. Through these media, it has been exhibited
as part WHAT IF... at the Science Gallery in Dublin and
Designed Disorder at the Center for Urban Built Environment
in Manchester. It is ongoing and, currently, a one-to-one
scale model of the Extra Room is in development. All images
reproduced herein are courtesy of and copyright the authors.

126
Sculpture
Field:
From the
Symbolic to the
Tectonic

Dan Handel
 Dan Handel

1
In the short war, fought in June 1967
To resist the universalist assumptions of
between Israel and its neighboring states modernity. This became the central task of
of Jordan, Syria, and Egypt, the Israeli
army led the way to what was considered a society left amidst the ruins of alienating
a decisive victory, tripling the territory
held by the state. This was also the point reconstruction and renewal efforts. The struggle
at which Israel came to hold the occupied
territories against UN resolutions.
of artists to formulate nuanced conceptions of the
2 human environment from these ruins reached an
The military achievements of the war
radically transformed the political apex in the volatile 1960s, challenging the role
discourse in Israel to result in new
settler movements that conceived of the of abstraction and its capacity to communicate
acquired territory as parts of the biblical
Promised Land. In architectural culture,
meaning. One way of overcoming this impasse,
this moment also signaled a shift from crystallized as the city and its artistic institutions,
a secular, modernist discourse into a
postmodern search of an architecture was to simply leave them behind. In 1967, as
of the place, curiously inspired by a mix
of Palestinian vernacular, biblical, and Israel was adjusting to its new boundaries
Mediterranean sources.
3
following the Six-Day War,1 and was reformulating
Ezra Orion, Sculpture Field (Israel, 1968), its national consciousness to oscillate between
1.
4 spiritualist occupation and politics of euphoria,2
Throughout the 1950s, Israeli artists,
inspired by the works of Mexican Ezra Orion moved to Sede-Boker in the Negev
muralists, set to redefine the relationships
between art and the public in a highly
Desert to work on his Sculpture Field. Fresh
socialistic political context. out of Londons Royal College of Art, Orion was
5
thresholds 40

Orion, Sculpture Field, 1. convinced that sculpture in the big citiesthat

is, of the artistic institutionswas hopelessly
ineffectual and had to be rejected. For him,
these works of modern art, having to fit through
doors and being positioned in low-ceiling gallery
spaces, were nothing but miniatures that could
not move people to spiritual experiences of
more than limited intensity.3 This impotence,
in his thinking, was caused by the city and its
structures, which mold sculpture in their form.
The correspondence between building and art,
attempted and argued for in the works of Israeli
muralists several years before,4 was no longer
an option for Orion. In lieu of their imagined
publics, he envisioned a collection of individual
epiphanies that could only take place once
a sculpture becomes big enough to contain
people in a total environment that would operate
around, above, and beneath them ... large
spaces sinking, rising... bursts of light into high
masses of darkness. Darkness enveloped by
concrete walls.5

128
 Sculpture Field

Sculpture Field Fig. 1, Orions unrealized

proposition for such an environment, was
designed as a complex of units, orchestrating
the visitors experience through a series of
underground spaces, monumental elements, and
calibrated desert lookouts. What might seem

socio

FIG. 1

to resemble other artistic inquiries of the same

decade should, in fact, be understood as aiming
toward radically different outcomes. This becomes
clear when Sculpture Field is seen against Dani
Karavans Negev Monument (19631968) near
Beersheeba Fig. 2. While both offer a compositional
array of concrete elements and various ways
of navigating through the site, Karavans
environment is immersed in explicit literalism
from the entrance wall imprinted with names of

129
 Dan Handel

Fig. 2
thresholds 40

fallen warriors, through the concrete passage that

reproduces wartime trenches Fig. 3, to the vertical
element perforated with bullet holes. Karavan,
Fig. 3 who was experimenting a decade earlier with wall
painting as a realist alternative to both abstract
and didactic art, is here joining both under the
auspices of a nationalist agenda. Karavans work
cuts itself from the ambition posed by socialist
realism to intertwine with society and thus imagine
communities from within. His environments
function merely as artistic illustrations of the
institutions will to mold publics on their terms. In
contrast to this approach, Sculpture Field refuses
to succumb to interpretation. The elements do
not represent but, rather, enable a continuous
formation. Their namescolumn, suspended
structure, or main pitsuggest nothing more

130
 Sculpture Field

than a classification of their qualities, never 6

Robert Smithson and Jack D. Flam,
implying their function. Robert Smithson, the Collected Writings
(Berkeley: University of California Press,
At the end of the 1960s, mainly in North 1996).
7
America, appearances in deserts as an art form Heizer also provided a cultural
were beginning to take hold. Michael Heizers interpretation of Edward Tellers
initiatives when declaring at one point,
experimentation in Nevada and Robert Smithsons The H-bomb, thats the ulti
-mate sculpture.
earth art in Utah used the desert as a canvas on
which they could become both monumental and
enigmatic. However, as influential as these works
were to become, their point of departure was
always the omnipresence of the human factor.
Smithson famously declared, the best sites for
earth art are sites that have been disrupted by
industry, reckless urbanization, or natures own
devastation.6 Heizer borrowed the scientific
terminology of the nuclear age, speaking
of earth-moving while exploding his way
through the desert in works such as Five Conic
Displacements in the Mojave or the spectacular
Double Negative in Utah Fig. 4.7 For his purposes,

socio
the desert was more the negative space of
civilization than an environment of its own. As
such, it worked according to human terms; the
scale and ambition of the works were the sheer
result of combining man and technology. The
rental system, writes Heizer, referring to the easy
access to earth-moving machinery, allows the

Fig. 4

131
 Dan Handel

8
Michael Heizer, The Art of Michael
artist practically any application he desires. It is
Heizer, Artforum 5 (December 1969): 35. now possible to rent a nuclear explosion. 8 It was
9
The larger context in which these artists a similar conception, deeply rooted in the state of
operated can be framed between the
techno-optimism of the space race, the American postindustrial culture,9 which allowed
discontents of consumer capitalism
which found their expressions in social
Smithson to articulate a correspondent structure
upheavals and counter-culture, and the between sites and non-sites. The former was a
decline of industrialism that exposed the
shadow sites of human progress. type of artintegral to and inseparable from its
10
Orion, Sculpture Field, 2. environmentthat could be captured and isolated
11
Orions Dust Hill (1984), located in
in the latter through documentation or framing
the Sede Boker airfield base, posed and, subsequently, displayed in the convenient
an ambivalent monument to human
endeavors and their ephemeral nature in setting of East Coast art institutions. For Orion,
the context of geological time.
12 this duality was invalidated with the desire to
Orions scheme for intergalactic
sculpture, developed since the 80s in
detach his work from the dynamics of civilization.
collaboration with NASA, envisioned the Galleriesand institutions in generalbecame
simultaneous launch of parallel laser
beams from dozens of stations on the irrelevant in the context of sculpture that was
northern hemisphere to create a one-
billion-kilometer-tall Super Cathedral. to exist in geological time like mountains,
Speaking at one such launch in 1992,
former Artforum editor Philip Leizer,
slopes, planes.10
described the moment as consistent... Politically, Orions tectonic art was predicting
with the greatest aspirations of modern
thresholds 40

art from the earliest moments of its
conception. It is as if this vision shared
by Malevich, Kandinsky, and Mondrian
has finally come into existence: the
dematerialized work of art, at last.
13
Ezra Orion, SculptureBeams of
Processes (Tel Aviv: Modan Midreshet
Sede Boker, 1995).
14
Arthur Koestler, The Ghost in the Machine
(London: Hutchinson, 1967).
15
Ellen Ginton, The Eyes of the State:
Visual Art in a Borderless Country, in
Ha-Enayim Shel Ha-Medinah: Omanut
Hazutit Bi-Medinah Le-Lo Gevulot, ed.
Ellen Ginton (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv Museum
of Art, 1998).
liberalization of the social order: once the frame
of reference comes to encompass thousands
of years, the immediate realities of geopolitical
conflict on the one hand and Israeli culture
on the other are but minor irregularities in a much
bigger process. This scale of operation would
later materialize in dust mountains11 Fig. 5 and
intergalactic laser monoliths12 Fig. 6. Retroactively,
Orion would speak on his concept of the field as
a four-dimensional space in which power sources
affect an environment, leading to the creation
of holons and autonomous men.13 His choice
of words is far from coincidental: using Arthur
Koestlers pseudo-philosophical terminology
for describing societies as collectives made
of individual pursuits14 fit squarely within the
ambition to enable unmediated, high-intensity
spiritual experience through art. Curiously, even
as Orion and his work could not be properly
framed in the received historiography of 1970s
Israeli art, relating either to dematerialization
(as in Ellen Gintons account of the period15)

132
Sculpture Field

Fig. 5

socio

Fig. 6

133
 Dan Handel

16
Sarah Breitberg-Semel, Dalut Ha-Homer
or the poverty of materials (as in Sara Breitberg-
Ke Eihut be Amanut Israelit
Semels influential thesis16), it reflected and, in
(Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv Museum of Art, 1986).
some ways, anticipated processes that would tear
down the homogenizing ethos of Israeli society.
After the 1973 Yom Kippur War and ensuing
energy crisis, a period of untamed optimism
gave way to an economic downturn and political
upheaval. For a growing part of the population, it
was becoming clear that the way forward had to
pass through a radical rethinking of the collective
nature of the Israeli nation-state and, then, an
individualization of its prospects. They were now,
in many ways, new holons in a new reality.

FIGS. 1, 5, 6
Reproduced by permission from Ezra
thresholds 40

Orion, Sculpture Field, 1968. Copyright

Ezra Orion.

FIGS. 2, 3
Reproduced by permission from Dani
Karvan, Negev Monument, 1963-1968.
Copyright Studio Dani Karvan.

FIG. 4
Reproduced by permission from Michael
Heizer, Double Negative, 1969. Copyright
Triple Aught Foundation 2011.

***
Dan Handel is an architect, a Ph.D
candidate at the Technion Israel
Institute of Technology, and the 2011
Young Curator at the Canadian Center for
Architecture. He holds an M.Arch II from
the Harvard Graduate School of Design
and a B.Arch from Bezalel Academy of
Art and Design. He has written for Block,
Conditions, Bracket, and the Journal of
Landscape Architecture. He is also editor
of Bezalel Papers, was assistant editor for
Invention/Transformation: Strategies for
the Qattara/Jimi Oases in Al Ain, and co-
author of Arizona Report (forthcoming).

134
 On
Radiation
Burn

Steve Kurtz of Critical Art Ensemble,

interviewed by Jonathan Crisman
 Steve Kurtz

Radiation Burn was a tactical media performance by Critical Art

Ensemble (CAE) at the 2010 Werkleitz Festival in Halle, Germany. The project
is part of an ongoing interrogation by the group into notions of media,
fear, security, and the military-industrial complex. Simulating the dirty
bomb scenario described by the Federation of American Scientists, 1 Critical
Art Ensemble detonated explosives, and subsequently brought in police,
emergency services, and radiation detectors. Amid the chaos, a nuclear
physicist stands at a lectern, describing why the events surrounding him
are unlikely ever to occur as he is roped off by cautious hazmat-suited
investigators. Ultimately, their stance is a critical one: phantasms of an
imagined doomsday scenario dominate our perception of the world,
transforming an otherwise benign reality into something controlled by
those who purport to keep us safe.

Jonathan Crisman arrangement of discourse SK You are correct in your

Critical Art Ensemble pioneered
the use of tactical mediaa
sort of art activism at the
confluence of new media,
critical theory, and semiotics.
With roots in Claude Lvi-
Strausss bricolage and the
thresholds 40
transformed the spectacle
into an image of waste, rather
than necessity, and changed
the explosion in a public park
from a dramatization of an
overwhelming and probable
threat into an experience that
observation that while this
project addresses a different
issue, its not so different
from the biotech projects.
Both utilized theater (in the
broadest sense of the term)
as the fundamental form of

Situationists detournment, was completely underwhelming discourse production, and

tactics were perhaps best
described by Michel de
Certeau as an opportunistic
way of using, manipulating,
and subverting the material
and media culture imposed
upon us.2 How does Radiation
Burnand the methods and
means used to produce the
projectfit within this lineage?
Steve Kurtz
CAE had two purposes for this
project: The first was to make
an iconic propaganda image
(i.e., the dirty bomb emergency)
sign in a manner it was thought
unable tothat is, as something
other than an emblem of and
justification for the security
stateand second, to empty
this spectacle of its motivational
affect. To accomplish these
goals, we placed the voice
of reason (a nuclear physicist)
at the center of the spectacle,
rather than on the margins, to
be given a sound bite after the
dust had cleared. This spatial
and perhaps a touch absurd.
In a Barthean sense, through
this performance, CAE was
able to inoculate the crowd
to be resistant to this form
of scare tactic. For CAE, this
project was a great example
of recombination to produce
an inversion of meaning in
an everyday life settingthe
perfect storm for subverting
propaganda.
JC While the group has
stated its own shift away from
a line of work dealing with
biotechnology, Radiation Burn
seems like perhaps a small
step to the sidedifferent, but
only just so. Can you describe
the thought process behind
how Critical Art Ensembles
work is categorized and why
this shift is both very much
present, as well as very much
within the groups historical
trajectoryperhaps this is
related to the changing object
of the groups critique?
were concerned with a critique
of biopolitics BothRadiation
Burn and a number of the
biotech projects sought to
replace panic with reflection,
and reveal the exploitive
latent imperatives of the
neoliberal economy that
frame the representations
of products and processes
to the non-specialized public.
The shift away from the
biotech initiative in particular
had more to do with CAEs
place in the art world. We
thought we were becoming
too much associated with the
bioart movementa movement
for which we have little sym-
pathy. We have no interest in
the aesthetics of science, nor
do we want to appropriate
scientific methods, processes,
products, or knowledge bases
in order to transform them into
tools of the arts. The revolution
in biology and its applications
in biotechnology over the past
two decades was profound in

160

the development of biopower
in an era of global free-market
capitalism, and that is what
drew us to the this area of
investigation. CAE did not care
if the projects we did were
perceived as art or not (and
most of the time they were not
unless the audience was told
they were by the authority of a
space, such as a museum, or a
managerial, cultural authority).
We were determined to
maintain our position as cultural
activists, but knew if we kept
doing what could be framed as
bioart, we would be neutralized
in that capacity. One of the
disciplinary tricks of the art
world that aids in keeping
cultural space smooth is to
insist that its subjects fit into
tidy pigeonholes. A material or
a topic is made to define the
totality of the subject. CAE did
want to become the bacteria
guys or the eugenics guys.
We wanted tobe able to move
where we could confront the
authoritarian crimes of culture
wherever they might be, as
opposed to establishing a
niche in a popular movement.
JC Beyond the obvious
relation of the groups
intentional social activism,
Critical Art Ensembles work
engages the social in a
number of ways. There is
the semiotic means through
which the group aims to
transform socially constructed
understanding; in the case of
Radiation Burn, there is the
milieu in which the performance
was staged; there is the very
fact that Critical Art Ensemble is
a group of five tactical media
practitioners rather than a
solo artist; and so on. Could
you unpack the notion of the
social further with regard to
the work that the group has
done, and the way in which this
work was produced?
On Radiation Burn
SK CAEs social relations
begin in non-rational
connectivity. We like being with
each other in a multiplicity of
ways. One of those relations
consists of inventing possible
solutions to social and political
problems, and concretizing
those solutions in our projects.
The process gives us pleasure.
We dont agree with Socrates
about much, but he nailed it
with the idea that explorational
learning experiences tend to
produce pleasure. How else
could we have done this for 25
years? Topics seem to emerge
without a tremendous amount
of searching, as in this case
when we saw some dirty bomb
simulations on TV and heard
the ridiculous alarmist rhetoric
that accompanying them, and
began thinking that this theater
of the absurd (or the security
state) has to be addressed.
Its not that difficult to then get
to, You know what someone
should do... Then comes
the hard part: We have to
determine what is the hierarchy
of who, where, how, and what.
In the case of Radiation Burn,
the most important question
was, What can we do about
this misinformation campaign?
Simply due to logistics the next
question was, Where can we
do it? And finally, Who will
be there and how do we best
speak to them?
Clearly, a tremendous
amount of room for
miscalculation existswhich
does happen more than we
would like. In order to shrink
that space a little, we have to
speak to as many locals as
possible to get a reasonable
idea of the physical and social
geography.
In the case of Radiation
Burn, that included our fellow
performers, the producers,
the festival staff, the police,
emergency services, some
161
politicians, and of course,
park-goers. Finally, during
the performance itself, we
had people walking through
the crowd discussing issues
around terrorism and the militari-
zation of radioactive material.
To do the work we do, sociality
is a key component; our work
cant be done locked in a studio.
The map is not the territory.
JC The full title of the piece
is Radiation Burn: A Temporary
Monument to Public Safety.
The idea of a temporary
monument is both paradoxical
and amusing, but it also very
much fits into the notion of
tactical media as ephemeral
and temporally constrained.
Why a monument? The word
suggests a particular spatial
quality to the project that might
not necessarily exist in other
work by the group, as well as a
hijacking of a particular idea of
socio
civic architecture.
SK This is the perfect follow-
up to what I was just saying.
Monumentality has always
been the sworn enemy of
tactical media practitioners.
It is the ultimate strategic
weapon of dominant culture,
as its function is to lock down
the meaning of a territory in
perpetuity in order to better
homogenize the experiences
of the territory and thus more
effectively eliminate difference.
In addition, CAE has always
hated the category of scale.
Nothing is less imaginative
then trying to make a work
impressive by making it
big. CAE has always been
interested in quality over
quantity. We like making work
that really gets into the heads
of a few rather than yet another
bit of spectacle in front of the
many (Stendahl syndrome aside).
Having said this, why
temporary monuments?

We came to point where
we needed to address some
problems of scale, so we had
to engage the category of scale
but without territorializing. The
temporary solved the latter
problem of territorialization.
We always deterritorialize when
our speech act ends, so the
next person can appropriate
the space for their own ends.
The problem of scale became
a necessary evil. In Radiation
Burn, the scale of the spectacle
we were appropriating
was huge, so we had to do
something roughly comparable
if we were to perform this
inoculation and construct
an association between
large bio-spectacles and
anticlimactic affect. Even the repeated goal of
Currently, we are work-
ing on another temporary
monumentthis one, to
global economic inequality.
thresholds 40
Here we have an abstraction
(class differentiation) on
such a profound scale that
we have to go big in order to
concretize it with full impact.
Our challenge here is to see if
we can embody in individuals a
sweeping statistical abstraction
and not just leave it as a
All images are video stills from
Radiation Burn footage, courtesy
Critical Art Ensemble.
***
Steve Kurtz is Professor of Visual Studies
at SUNY Buffalo. He holds a PhD in
Interdisciplinary Humanities and is a
founding member of the art and theory
group Critical Art Ensemble (CAE). CAE
is a collective of five tactical media
practitioners of various specializations,
who focus on the exploration of the
intersections between art, critical theory,
technology, and political activism. The
collective has performed and produced
a wide variety of projects for an
international audience at diverse venues
ranging from the street, to the museum,
to the Internet. CAE has also written five
books, their most recent being Marching
Plague (Autonomedia, 2006).
Steve Kurtz
visual impression. The point
of amusement for CAE is to
monumentalize the actuality
(inequality) instead of the
ever-elusive ideal (equality).
JC This seems to be a
strength of tactical media
it is lucid in a way that other
media are not. While the, say,
critical avant-garde of the
postwar era filtered much
of their cultural production
through a filter of abstraction,
contemporary tactical media
are powerful because they lack
these aesthetic gymnastics. As
you said earlier, whether your
projects are perceived as art or
not is less important than CAEs
capacity as cultural activists.
inoculating a population
seems to point toward this.
Could you speak a bit more
about these goalswhat is the
endgame? Could you foresee
a point where CAE might need
to abandon a co-opted tactical
media medium for another
form of cultural intervention?
SK CAE has no endgame.
We do not accept a principle of
universal utopia. However, as
Endnotes
1 See Jonathan Medalia, Terrorist
Dirty Bombs: A Brief Primer
(Washington DC: Congressional
Research Service, 2004).
2 See Claude Lvi-Strauss, The
Savage Mind (London: Weidenfeld
& Nicolson, 1966); Guy Debord,
Society of the Spectacle (Detroit:
Black & Red, 1977); and Michel de
Certeau, The Practice of Everyday
Life (Berkeley: University of
California, 1984).
162
we look at history, there
seem to be specific times
and places that appear to be
more desirable than others.
Our question is, How do
we call utopian moments
constructed within specific
contexts into actuality?
Or, to put it negatively, How
can we reduce the intensity
of authoritarian tendencies
within a given place and time?
Cultural and political struggle
is a permanent condition of
existence for anyone compelled
to engage the given social reality.
CAE does not worry about co-
optation either. A tactic may be
recuperated and turned against
us, but the beauty of tacticality
is its mobility. We assume
recuperation, and are always
prepared to change-up and
move elsewhere. Moreover, we
steal far more ideas from those
who benefit from the status quo
then they can ever take from
usthey either own or control
the engines of production,
after all. Recuperation is
multidirectional. Once this fact
is understood and acted upon,
co-optation becomes
a nonissue.
 Cairo
di sopra
in gi:
Perspective,
Photography, and
the Everyday

Christian A. Hedrick
 Christian A. Hedrick

1
Am I a photojournalist or a
Nadia Kamel et al., Randa Shaath:Under
the Same Sky, Cairo (Barcelona:Fundaci photographer? Im not quite sure. Of
Antoni Tpies;Rotterdam:Witte de
With,2003). I would like to especially late, people from the art world have
thank Randa Shaath for her generosity in
providing me with permission to reprint
been approaching me more often.
her photographs in this essay. I would
This has not really changed my style.
also like to thank Ijlal Muzaffar for his
comments on the early version of this text I am a documentary photographer
as well as the comments provided by the
anonymous reviewers of Thresholds. This and photography for me is a way of
essay was written on the eve of the Egyptian
Revolution.
expressing my ideas. In the islands of
2
Cairo project, for instance, I have not
The Roman philosopher and author Pliny the
Elder in his Naturalis Historia recounts the simply focused on the beauty of the
story of the painting competition between
the Greek painters Parrhasius and Zeuxis islands. I have a point in taking and
to see which of them could paint a scene
closest to nature. According to the story,
exhibiting those photographs. These
at the moment of truth, when the curtain is
people were about to be expelled
removed from Zeuxiss painting, it reveals
a scene of grape vines which birds swoop so that a hotel could be built and I
down to try to eat. Then Zeuxis atttempts
to pull aside the curtain on Parrhasiuss told their story in pictures. I do not
painting and realizes that the curtain itself
is the painting and that he had been beaten
photograph in countries that I dont
because it deceived even him.
know and about which I dont have
3
As The Oxford Companion to Art indicates, a point of view. In these cases, a
Illusionistic painting and decoration were
postcard would do better.
thresholds 40

well known in the Hellenistic age and were

highly esteemed in imperial Rome. However,
Randa Shaath 1
most of the forms of illusionism [were]
later developed [during] the Renaissance
and Baroque periods. Also see Rudolf
Wittkower, Art and Architecture in Italy 1600-
1750, vol. 1, Early Baroque 1600-1625 (New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1958),
35. He states here that it first appears as
early as 1516 but that it did not become
established until later in the century.

One of the most celebrated examples of a representational

technique dependent uponbut also exploitive ofa very
specific subjective viewpoint is the Renaissance painting
technique di sotto in s, meaning seen from below. While still
acknowledging the theoretical implications of Plinys anecdote
of Parrhasiuss curtain,2 we are nonetheless generally able to
locate the moment of origin of this technique of illusionistic
ceiling painting to somewhere in late sixteenth-century Italy.3
Painters utilized this technique in order to create a trompe loeil
upon the surface of a flat or domed ceiling, representing the
fictive space of the sky. This often included depicting putti and
a variety of otherworldly motifs represented naturalistically
and foreshortened through fresco or paint. One of the most
famous examples of this technique can be found in Andrea
Mantegnas Camera degli Sposi of the Palazzo Ducale in
Mantua (146574) Fig. 1 . As Erwin Panofsky remarked on
the development of perspective during the Renaissance, in
his seminal text Perspective as Symbolic Form, The picture

164
 Cairo di sopra in gi

has become a mere slice of reality, to the extent and in the 4

Erwin Panofsky, Perspective as Symbolic
sense that imagined space now reaches out in all directions Form, trans. Christopher Wood (New York:

beyond represented space, that precisely the finiteness of the Zone Books, 1997), 60-61.
5
picture makes perceptible the infiniteness and continuity of Henri Lefebrve, The Production of Space,

the space.4 Technically and conceptually, di sotto in s is more trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (Malden, MA:
Blackwell Publishers, 1991), 97.
than just a trompe loeil or a misleading of the eye; rather, it
depends on an individuals point of viewnot any point of
view, or any space, but specifically from below looking up at what
was usually an allegory represented on a ceiling, which relied
upon developed techniques of perspective. The priority of a
subjects viewpoint therefore became a pervasive trope in the
history of art and architecture. More specifically, looking up,
as well as the importance placed on the point of view, has a
long and detailed history with empyrean associations. Moreover
the moment that perspectiva artificialis acknowledges the space
of viewership and the position it occupies, perspectiva naturalis,
the agency for the viewer is configured in a dialogue with the
painting allowing specific moments in real space to affect the
perspective of the representation. This theoretical significance,
with its litany of associations in Western art beginning well
before the Renaissance, can help us explore its modern
obverse: di sopra in gi. In other words, what are the theoretical
implications of looking down? I would therefore like to use

socio
this concept, di sopra in gi, as a starting point to consider the
work of the American-born photographer Randa Shaath, both
in its social implications in understanding and recording the
urban space of Cairos inhabitants in terms of theories of the
everyday as well as its relationship to art.
I will consider the following questions as I frame this
brief inquiry of Randa Shaaths series Under the Same Sky:
The Rooftops of Cairo (2003) in light of her self-described
position between art and journalism: What effect does a
photographers physical position have on a photograph and its
meaning, especially when photographing people in an urban
context? Who are the subjects of her photographs and why
were they photographed in this way? Can one make use of the
images to elucidate these urban spaces and their meaning(s),
or is the image simply, as Lefebvre suggests, an incriminated
medium ... where the error consists in a segmentation of
space?5 What do these photographs say about the socio-
political conditions and photographer that have created them
and what do they mean for the relationship between the social
project and art? The sociologist Asef Bayat, whose work has
previously been paired with Shaaths, has provided an analysis
that begins to set up a useful context within which we can
reexamine her work in terms of its subject matter. However,
theories of the everyday remain absent from the discourse on

165
 Christian A. Hedrick
thresholds 40

Fig. 1 Andrea Mantegna, Fresco in the Camera degli Sposi in the Palazzo Ducale in Mantua scene:
vault fresco detail, 1473. Illus. from The Yorck Project: 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei.
DVD-ROM, 2002. Distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH.
Fig. 2 C airo Rooftops (1). Courtesy of and copyright Randa Shaath.
Fig. 3 C airo Demonstration, 2003. Courtesy of and copyright Randa Shaath.

166
Cairo di sopra in gi

socio

3
167
 Christian A. Hedrick

6
Shaaths photography. It is therefore essential first to establish
Asef Bayat, The Quiet Encroachment of
the Ordinary, in Tamss: Contemporary what is involved in Shaaths photographic technique, which
Arab Representations, vol. 2, Cairo,
complicates her work and how the viewer perceives it.
ed. Catherine David (Rotterdam:Witte
de With;Barcelona:Fundaci Antoni In contrast to the Renaissance technique of di sotto in
Tpies,2004), 41.
s, which attempted to reveal the idealized space of heaven
7
Ibid., 40. through its representation, and depended solely upon an
8 
architectural context such as a church in order to enhance its
For a variety of recent explorations on this
topic, see Jeffrey Hou, ed., Insurgent Public effect, its obverse is a subject that is often quite the opposite
Space: Guerrilla Urbanism and the Remaking
of notions relating to heaven. Randa Shaaths technique of
of Contemporary Cities (New York:
Routledge, 2010). photographing in her series Under the Same Sky: The Rooftops
9
of Cairo, which for the purposes of this essay I will refer to as
Bayats passive network is described
in part by the possibility of atomized di sopra in gi or seen from above, depicts scenes of the city of
individuals with similar positions brought
Cairo from her high-rise apartment building. The subject of
together through space. See Asef Bayat,
Un-Civil Society: The Politics of the this black and white photo series is Cairos roofscape and its
Informal People, Third World Quarterly 18,
inhabitants. Shaaths photographs capture what appear to be
no. 1 (March 1997): 64ff.
the ordinary people of Cairo. Her oeuvre ranges from photos
of vendors in the street and people in the market, to protesters
in Tahrir Square, poor inhabitants of the Nile Islands, and
scenes on Cairene rooftops Fig. 2 .
The subjects of Shaaths photographs include the
downtrodden and marginalizedpeople who Bayat has
thresholds 40

largely described as the migrants, refugees, unemployed,

under-employed, squatters, street vendors, street children,
and other marginalized groups, whose growth has been
accelerated by the process of economic globalization.6 Bayat
argues that this group is engaged in a quiet encroachment
of contemporary Egyptian society, specifically in larger cities
like Cairo. For him, this notion of the quiet encroachment ...
describes the silent, protracted but pervasive advancement
of the ordinary people on the propertied and powerful in
order to survive and improve their lives.7 His concern is
primarily with how this large component of society, living
under an oppressive regime, negotiates a place for itself within
the urban space. He highlights a variety of actions taken by
agents of encroachmentsuch as siphoning off water or
electricity from the citys main supplies instead of from ones
neighborthat are essentially direct resistance to the State.
Another form of this everyday resistance is the appropriation
of spaces for dwelling such as empty rooftops through the
construction of artificial or temporary walls as dwellers search
to create more meaningful spaces within an urban context
specific to their needs.8 His work also argues for the existence
of so-called passive networks, which are coordinated efforts
between individuals of various populations.9 It is through this
approach of what Bayat terms tactical retreatssuch as
bribing officials or inhabiting less strategic, peripheral spaces
(e.g., alleys and rooftops)that these ordinary individuals carve

168
 Cairo di sopra in gi

out a daily existence. It is important to note here that these forms 10

of resistance within this context differ significantly from James
Scotts theorized techniques of organized opposition and could in
fact be seen as a new landscape of resistance.10
Bayats theories on the disenfranchised urban inhabitants and
their socio-political struggle provide a text to Shaaths depictions
of urban conditions, and can also be situated within the broader
theoretical framework of the French social theorists of the last
century. Indeed, these theories of the everyday should be brought
to bear on the discourse of Shaaths photographs whose content
and style make these theories decidedly relevant. In particular,
Michel de Certeaus theories on the everyday are applicable to
these relationships and build upon Henri Lefebvres seminal work
Critique of Everyday Life. Certeau argues that his goal is to bring
to light the models of action characteristic of users whose status as
the dominated element in society (a status that does not mean that
they are either passive or docile) is concealed by the euphemistic
term consumers. Everyday life invents itself by poaching in
countless ways on the property of others.11 And while we cannot
consider the subjects of Shaaths photography consumers in the
arena of a hyper-capitalist system (the primary subject of Certeaus
study), they are no doubt a presence, as well as a dominated
element in society.12 They are, as Bayat explains, ordinary people
James C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak:
Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
1985). Also see Ranjit Guha, Elementary
Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial
India (Durham, NC: Duke University Press,
1999), xi. The outcome of the 2011 Egyptian
Revolution, however, still remains to be
seen as Cairos poor majority continues to
struggle within the new framework of the
military regime.
11
Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday
Life (Berkeley, CA: University of California
Press, 1984), xi-xii.
12
Ibid.
13
Asef Bayat, Cairos Poor: Dilemas of
Survival and Solidarity, in Cairo: Power,
Poverty and Urban Survival, Middle East
Report, no. 202 (Spring 1997): 5.
14
It is important to note here that despite the
Egyptian Revolution, which involved a fairly
large segment of Egypts urban society,
these forms of daily resistance continue and
in some cases have intensified.

socio
... without clear leadership, ideology, or structured organization
and he distinguishes them from participants in organized social
movements, emphasizing how they carve out a daily existence
distinct from survival strategies or everyday resistance in that the
struggles and gains of the agents are not at the cost of their fellow
poor or themselves, but of the State, the rich and the powerful.13
Certeaus theory, in this case, falls short in that it maintains the
existence of the idea of an everyday that resides outside of existing
structures of power rather than something that operates within
them. Nonetheless, his theory affords us an opportunity to consider
how the everyday might operate as a type of resistance strategy as
articulated by Bayat and revealed in Shaaths photographs.14
Within Shaaths body of work are a series of people and spaces
above and within Cairos streets. The subjects of Shaaths work
range from photographing public gatherings such as in First Day of
the Iraq War, Cairo 20 March 2003 Fig. 3 , to the poor inhabitants of
the Nile islands just south of Cairo Fig. 4 . These photos of everyday
life attempt to capture the presence of these silent actors within
Cairos public spaces. Shaath, however, leaves us without an ability
to construct a narrative as to who we are actually looking at and
what their story might be. Her photographs depicting rooftop
scenes demand more inquiry with regard to the everyday Fig. 5 .
Through her Rooftop series, Shaath often highlights the situation of
a disenfranchised community or, in the words of Certeau, their

169
 Christian A. Hedrick
thresholds 40

Fig. 4 C
 airo Islands. Courtesy of and copyright Randa Shaath.
Fig. 5 C
 airo Rooftops (2). Courtesy of and copyright Randa Shaath. 5
Fig. 6 C
 airo Rooftops (3, 4). Courtesy of and copyright Randa Shaath.

170
Cairo di sopra in gi

socio
6

171
 Christian A. Hedrick

15
lived tactic within a regimes power structure. Shaath, at the
The photos in this series were published
without titles. very least, begins to reveal the complexity and multiplicity of
16
social and spatial layers present within Cairo and, if nothing
Asef Bayat, Street Politics: Poor Peoples
Movements in Iran (New York: Columbia else, highlights the condition of these anonymous silent
University Press, 1997), 13.
actors by photographing them.
If we consider Shaaths rooftop photographs as art (as
they increasingly are), they convey conflicting messages and
arguably run the risk of clich when they cross into a gallery
space due to the possible reading of them as an attempt
to give a voice to the disenfranchised, but this is often a
problem of photographers who embrace the downtrodden
as an aesthetic. Are these photos depicting some kind of
struggle against the State through their subject matter by
revealing a condition normally unseen, or are they simply
to be read as neutral formal expressions of photography
regardless of their content? Where is the viewer and what
are we observing? Who are the people in these photographs
and do they know they are being photographed? If we briefly
look at an example of these images we can begin to discern
possible explanations. In a pair of photographs Fig. 6 taken of
the same place at different times of the day, we see a scene of
thresholds 40

rooftop dwellers (possibly a family?) gathered on the roof.15

The first image shows a group of four people, two men and
two women, sitting on a carpet, casually drinking what looks
to be coffee or tea in the midday sun. They are surrounded
by a striped patterned cloth or blanket fixed to vertical poles,
which creates a temporary roofless room on the roof of the
building. The second photo shows two individuals (a man and
boy) taking the cloth down from its posts and folding it up,
having just rolled up the carpet, returning the rooftop to its
more open state.
The dilemma with these photographs is that Shaath,
while at the same time revealing the condition of the urban
dweller by documenting their activities, subsequently
contravenes their private domain. That is to say, the roof
dwellers probably put the blanket up as a visual barrier for a
reason, yet through her technique of di sopra in gi, she has
subverted their efforts as a surveillance camera that relies on
this technique might, to capture their pattern of everyday
ritual. The idea of transgressing the subjects private space,
despite the fact that it is created out of what was once a
public space, is applicable here because, as Bayat explains,
there are a variety of culturally based privacy issues regarding
many of these families.16 Their interest is in protecting their
own familys privacy as well as maintaining a clear division
between the public and private sphere. In this example, as
in the rest of this series, it appears that these individuals are

172
 Cairo di sopra in gi

unaware that they are being photographed, unaware that 17

Certeau defines a strategy as the
their private lives have been exposed. Shaaths vantage point calculation (or manipulation) of power

from above then becomes controversial because a rooftop relationships that becomes possible as soon
as a subject with will and power (a business,
maintains a unique position of privacy, while only partly in an army, a city, a scientific institution) can
be isolated. See Certeau, The Practice of
the public realm. Therefore Shaaths elevated vantage point
Everyday Life, 35-36.
approaches Certeaus concept of a strategy in order to record 18
Kamel, Randa Shaath, 9.
the spaces of the tactic.17
Thus, through this technique of di sopra in gi as
employed by Shaath, a dichotomy emerges. The photo
appropriates at once the language of surveillance in order
to reveal this hidden urban condition of the everyday, while
a documentary narrative is constantly woven around her
work through publications and gallery shows. It is precisely
because of this dichotomy that Shaaths photographs have
gone from being considered journalism to art. Shaath makes
these disparate moments upon the rooftops, and the situations
captured by her camera, appear as a collective entity. She calls
it a new kind of community,18 suggesting the existence of
Bayats passive network; however, her technique remains
controversial due to its non-artistic associations (i.e., surveillance).
Shaaths photographs do not provide a reductive graphic
depiction of the everyday, but rather a provocative look into
how these different layers of society coexist with one another

socio
revealing the heterogeneous context of the urban milieu
where a great diversity of people struggle to survive. Reading
Shaaths photographs as journalism, which attempts only to
reveal an authentic urban condition, is somewhat misleading
due to her careful and methodical photographic compositions
and educational background in visual communication.
However, at the same time, her photos do reveal an aspect of
these marginalized classes of urban poor throughout the city,
as well as offer a social critique as discussed. But reading her
work as art is more problematic. Whatever message Under the
Same Sky: The Rooftops of Cairo conveys in the end, it reveals
the conflicting nature of attempting to capture the story of
this marginalized group through the medium of photography.
While Shaath does not claim her work to be art per
se, but rather it is considered so by people from the art
world, the classification becomes significant due to the
works pervasive social commentary. It is her chosen medium
of photography and the use of the non-conventional di
sopra in gi techniquewhich is typically employed by
those who are accused of subjugating these marginalized
groupsthat gives her work an aura of something more
than just documentation, something appealing to curators
and galleries. These issues continue to resonate throughout
much of her work. An essential point remains: instead of the

173
 Christian A. Hedrick

more common accusation leveled at an artists work becoming

increasingly associated with socio-political causes, such that
the status of their art as art becomes questionable, we have
here an example of the art world pulling Shaath into its circles
to claim her work as art. In whatever way one ends up reading
her work, this difficulty of classification is precisely because
the di sopra in gi technique situates her series Under the Same
Sky squarely between documentary journalism and art.
thresholds 40

***
Christian A. Hedrick is an architect and
a PhD candidate at MIT. His dissertation
is tentatively titled German Architects
and the Encounter with Egypt in the
Nineteenth Century. His work utilizes
the drawings and buildings generated
by these architects and their experience
with Egyptian and Islamic architecture to
identify the relationship between different
modes of representation from the
historiography of architecture to its formal
expression as a cultural and political
identity. He received an MArch from the
University of Michigan and a BA in History
from John Carroll University.

174
 HUSH

Steven Beckly, with a response

by Jonathan D. Katz
 Steven Beckly and Jonathan D. Katz

Hush is collection of military images

examining contemporary notions of queer
identity and relationship through the
recontextualization of old photographs.
Using found images collected from
vintage stores, antique dealers, and the
Internet, the surfaces of past relationships
are extracted and reconfigured to
establish a new and common meaning
through a variety of digital methods.
thresholds 40

Some photographs are strategically

cropped, shifting the focus of what
was originally documented; other
photographs are digitally stitched
together, merging disconnected identities
to form new relationships; finally, other
photographs are left unaltered, simply
presented in this new context. By such
means, unknown identities, relationships,
and histories are re-worked and re-
presented as commentary on the former US
military policy of Dont Ask, Dont Tell.
Steven Beckly 1

176
Hush

socio

177
 Steven Beckly and Jonathan D. Katz
thresholds 40

186
 HUSH
Queers often have either a tenuous or a
conflicted relationship to historya general-
ization, to be sure, but as generalizations go,
a persuasive one. Queers understand that
historythe dominant cultures account of
itselfhas repeatedly lied about us, buried
or obscured our divergent communities and
cultures, hushed both the celebrated and the
anonymous among us, denied existence to
our heroes and our traitors, our triumphs and
our tragedies. This is the story of our past,
but its also of our present. As we watch it
happen today, again and again, our faith in
other peoples accounts of us, attenuated to
begin with, is frayed beyond repair.
On those rare occasions when histories
deign to acknowledge our presence, too often
queerness is made a mundane aspect of biog-
raphy, like being born in Poughkeepsie, and
not the determining force it so often is. This
is the new homophobia, the kind that denies
queerness any purchase on our being, as if
being a member of the last minority that can
be legally discriminated against leaves no
marks on individual lives. The genius of
homophobia has long been these pervasive
attempts to isolates the individual queer as
exceptionalan outlier within a world of
happy heterosexualityinterrupting the
formation of political solidarity and comm-
unity, one with a texture, a nuance, a culture
all its own.
Since history has so often lied about
queerness, queers often have little compunc-
tion in returning the favor. We rummage
through history, actively on the look-out for
self-reflections. Upon finding them, we then
claim these silent signs as evidence of a
repression we know only too well. We claim
and reclaim, fashioning an alternative history,
grandiose and plausible in equal measure,
with that passion that comes from seeing
oneself reflected in a mirror for the first time.2
That this claiming can so often turn out to be
true (cf. Ellen DeGeneres or Ricky Martin)
only underscores how gaydar and gossip can
be reframed as unauthorized history, denied
only authoritativeness, not truth, because of
its manifest ideological dissidence. But in the
final analysis, truth stands to the side in this
act of claiming and reclaimingits not utterly
187
irrelevant, but its hardly the point. We know
well that their histories, unbound by any ethic
of truth in the first place, have long had the power
to make their falsehoods true, reconfiguring
our gayness as their confirmed bachelorhood
and the like. Claiming thus also becomes an
act of disclaiming, a performative refusal of
historys innumerable lies, big and small.
In Hush, Steven Beckly claims and re-
claims history through the appropriation of
old photographs.3 Hes a happy liar, and the
violence he performs on historical truth is the
inverse of the kind done to us, for it is in the
service not of repression, but liberation. His
work makes self-evident the malleability of the
past in the hands of the present, and does it in
a way few historians dare to acknowledge. He
plunders and speculates, mirrors and insinu-
ates. Its cheeky, but more than that, it offers
up the prospect that we can not only reverse
our erasure from history, but also make up
new histories of our own, unconstrained by
truth claims. And in this grab bag version of
historywhich is really the only history we
haveto universalize queerness does some-
socio
thing consequentially different from the usual
universalization of straightness: it holds up the
possibility, glimpsed fleetingly in these photo-
graphs, of a world without sexual categories,
without policed boundaries and judgments of
appropriate and inappropriate behavior.
Beckly offers up a vision of a queer future
molded to the contours of our past; its not
only ahead of us, its also behind us, and
there is much comfort in realizing that we
are now doing what we have already done.
1 Steven Beckly, Hush, artists statement. All images are
courtesy of the artist and copyright Steven Beckly.
2 For more on this, see Scott Bravmann, Queer Fictions of
the Past: History, Culture and Difference (Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press, 1997).
3 For additional work in this vein, see David Deitcher, Dear
Friends: American Photographs of Men Together, 1840-
1918 (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2001).
 Steven Beckly and Jonathan D. Katz
thresholds 40

***
Steven Beckly is a photo-based artist living and working in
Toronto, Canada. His practice explores the complexities of
identity, relationships, intimacy, and sexuality. His work has
been exhibited nationally and internationally.

Jonathan D. Katz was the first tenured professor in gay and

lesbian studies in the US, working at the intersection of art
history and queer history. He was recently co-curator with
David C. Ward and Jenn Sichel of the exhibition Hide/Seek:
Difference and Desire in American Portraiture at the National
Portrait Gallery and is currently Associate Professor of Visual
Studies at SUNY Buffalo where he is Director of the PhD program.

188
 NORCs
in
New York

Tobias Armborst, Georgeen Theodore, and Daniel DOca

of Interboro Partners
 Interboro Partners

NORC is a funny word, but we didnt make it up. On the

contrary, the word is recognized by the local, state, and federal
government, and has been in use since 1986. Actually, NORC
is an acronym. It stands for Naturally Occurring Retirement
Community. Basically, a NORC is a place (a building, a
development, a neighborhood) with a significant elderly
population that wasnt purpose-built as a senior community.
What counts as a significant elderly population varies from
place to place (and from one level of government to the next),
but thats the basic definition. NORCs are important because
once a community meets the criteria, it becomes eligible for
local, state, and federal funds to retroactively provide that
community with the support services elderly populations need
(for example, case management and social work services,
health care management and prevention programs, education,
socialization, and recreational activities, and volunteer
opportunities for program participants and
the community).
thresholds 40

As it happens, there are 27 NORCs in New York City, located

in four boroughs. NORCs are a nationaleven international
phenomenon, but the NORC movement began right here in
New York City, when a consortium of UJA-Federation agencies
established the Penn South Program for Seniors in 1986.
Let us say a few words about why were so interested
in NORCs:
First of all, the naturally occurring part is intriguing. Were
interested in these sorts of bottom-up dynamics, and have
explored them in previous projects.
Second, were interested in NORCs because we like what
they do for New York City. Of course, one of the greatest
things about New York City is its diversity. New York City is a
city that is supposed to tolerateand maybe even encourage
and engenderdifference. New York is supposed to be a city
where people of different races, classes, and lifestyles coexist.
Generational diversity is an important part of this ideal: just
as NYC would be undermined by racial homogeneity, so too
would it be undermined by age homogeneity. (This threat of
age homogeneity is a very real one: Manhattan, for example,
is becoming whiter and younger. In fact, in New York City, the
percent of the population that was 60+ decreased from 17.5%

190
 NORCs in New York

in 1990 to 15.6% in 2000lower than both the New York State

percentage, and that of the US. We might criticize Florida for
being a geriatric ghetto, but in some ways, Manhattan is in danger
of becoming a youth ghetto.)
Third, we like what NORCs do for the elderly. People grow old,
and instead of moving to a purpose-built retirement community
in the suburbs or the sunbelt, they stay in the home and the
community that they always lived in. Aging in place, as some
people call it, poses some challenges, but to NORC advocates,
the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. As the UJC states,
by all accounts, the vast majority of older Americans want to, or
by necessity, will remain living in their own home, even as they
grow frail.
Fourth, were interested in the fact that almost all NORCs are
towers in the parkthat much maligned mid-century planning
typology. While observing NORCs, we quickly discovered that
the so-called tower in the park is the ideal architecture for a
community of seniors: a combination of elevators, wide hallways,
communal green spaces, shared facilities, and shopping and
services typically on the same block serve the community very

socio
well. In recent years, many tower projects have been maligned or
taken down because of the belief that such architecture creates
estrangement and social problems. When we looked at NORCs,
however, we found just the opposite. Could it be that NORCs
provide a new calling for this modernist housing typology?
Fifth, were interested in the fact that 19 of the NORCs are
in limited-equity housing co-ops, built mostly in the first half of
the twentieth century by unions to house their swelling ranks of
workers. Because homeowners are forbidden from selling their
units on the open market (limited-equity housing co-ops sell
units to homeowners for below-market prices in exchange for an
agreement that the homeowner will sell his or her unit back to the
co-op for only slightly more than he or she paid for it), they have
little incentive to sell as the sales price of this type of apartment
will not yield enough money to buy a comparable apartment on
the market. This combination of homeowners having no economic
incentive to leave combined with the fact that the homeowners,
as union members and organizers committed to cooperative
living and working, were a very lefty group, helps explain the
emergence of the NORC movement.

191
While social scientists have produced many important studies on NORCs, architects and urban planners have generally paid NORCs very little attention despite their many architectural, planning, and social implications.
Visit any tower-in-the-park in New York and you are likely to find seniors making good use of the ample green space.
 Interboro Partners
thresholds 40

198
NORCs in New York

socio

4
1 Penn South
2 Lincoln-Amsterdam
3 Lincoln Guild
4 Morningside Heights

199
 Interboro Partners
thresholds 40

200
NORCs in New York

socio

8
5 Isaacs Houses and Holmes Towers
6 Phipps Houses
7 Co-op Village
8 Knickerbocker Village

201
 Interboro Partners
thresholds 40

10

202
NORCs in New York

11

socio

12
9 Vladeck Houses
10 Amalgamated/Park Reservoir
11 Parkchester Preservation
12 Big Six Towers

203
 Interboro Partners
thresholds 40

13

14

204
NORCs in New York

15

socio

13 Ravenswood
14 Queensview
15 Trump 4 Us

205
 Interboro Partners
Jonathan Crisman
Describe the first moment you realized
you were experiencing a NORC.
Interboro Partners
In 2006, we were invited to do an
exhibition at common room 2, a space on
the Lower East Side headed by Lars Fischer,
Maria Ibaez de Sendadiano, and Todd
Rouhe. The exhibition space was in the
lobby of common rooms office, a commercial
building in the Seward Park Cooperative
complex. As we started planning the
exhibition, we noticed that the lobby, which
was used by all the people associated with
common roomcool architects, designers,
and artistswas also inhabited by elderly
people with heavy New York accents and
canes. It turns out that the building is the
epicenter of Seward Parks senior culture:
a large-windowed second story office that
houses the Seward Park NORC Supportive
Services Program, or NORC-SSP. The NORC-
thresholds 40
SSP is a gathering place for Seward Parks
seniors: a place to organize transport to the
doctor, sign up for meals on wheels, get a flu
shot, play bingo, take a yoga class, and so on.
We saw this ground floor lobby as a
space of encounter among the buildings
different constituents: the architects and
designers who worked in the building,
exhibition visitors who came to see common
room 2 shows, and the NORC-SSP seniors
who used their community room to take care
of their health needs and to socialize. We
built our exhibition around trying to increase
the interaction (positive friction?) among
these groups, and in particular, the
NORC-SSP people and those who came
to the exhibition.
In many ways, this space embodied
ideals of the good city. As an urban space
in which people of difference have chance
encounters, it is just the sort of space
that the homogenization of Manhattan is
endangering. Believing that there is a value
to having different types of people rub
shoulders in the same space, we started to
investigate how this group of seniorsin that
face of a meteoric rise in real estate values
and increased living costsmanaged to stay
put among their friends on the Lower East
Side. That was the start of this project.
JC
What kind of closed-loop or endogenous
phenomena have you observed in these
social systems? Are there any kind of other-
worldly perceptions, interactions, or spatial
appropriations that occur in these habitats
that might seem strange elsewhere but seem
right at home within the NORCs?
IP
One thing thats great about NORCs is
that they are integrated with the city around
them. Sure, when youre sitting in the park
of one or another tower-in-the-park you can
forget that you are in this dense, crowded
city, but for the most part, whats great about
NORCs is that they arent islands. Despite
the fact that there are delivery services,
senior shuttles, and on-site entertainment,
most of the seniors who live in the NORCs
make use of neighborhood services. We
spent a lot of time in NORCs, but we also
spent a lot of time around NORCs, mapping
interactions between NORC residents and
the surrounding neighborhoods. We were
very busy! Visit northern Chelsea between
Seventh and Ninth Avenues and youll see
it for yourself: lots of senior citizens at the
pharmacies, movie theaters, delis, and so on.
The most exciting thing is when a NORC-SSP
forms a relationship with a neighborhood
institution, like when students from FIT came
to Penn South to work with seniors on their
apartment interiors.
JC
What is happening to these
developments as residents, for lack of
a better term, move out? What kind of
constituency is moving in?
IP
What happens to the developments
when residents move out really depends on
the development. Unfortunately, many of the
limited-equity housing co-ops that house
NORCs have opted to go market. What this
means is that when a unit becomes available,
206
 NORCs in New York
the unit goes to the highest bidder. However
when an apartment becomes available in
Penn Southwhose tenants have opted to
remain a limited-equity co-op marketit
goes to whoever is next on the waiting list.
As Penn Southlike other limited-equity co-
opshave income limits, the unit is likely
to go to someone who wouldnt otherwise
be able to afford to own an apartment in
Chelsea. The challenge for NORCs is to
retain their elderly population, since they risk
losing their NORC status (and hence their
funding), once they go below 50 percent
senior. As very few people ever leave limited-
equity co-ops, this is less a problem for them;
however, it is a major concern for places that
have gone market.
JC
Do you have any kind of design agenda
or projective thoughts on how to approach
the NORC? Or is this purely an incidence of
seeing something interesting and wanting to
give it attention?
IP
NORCs help the elderly age in place,
and thus help maintain the citys generational
diversity, which we also think is a good
thing. But NORC funding has decreased
significantly in recent years. So on the one
hand, we see our work as advocates, where
we make the case for NORCs by using
easy-to-understand storytelling techniques.
Visualizing the history of NORCs and
illustrating the values they bring to both
their residents and the city at large is a
design project itself and is definitely part
of our agenda.
Of course, there are plenty of physical
design opportunities, ranging from
increasing accessibility to developing more
flexible unit arrangements. With regards
to accessibility: a lot of NORCs and a lot of
the neighborhoods where you find NORCs
have some work to do here. It could be
as simple as replacing stairs with ramps
(stairs tend to be a problem in some of
the older NORCs, such as Parkchester),
redesigning intersections to slow down
cars, or increasing the time a senior has to
207
cross a street. Another interesting issue is
the relationship between the unit and the
household. Many units were first inhabited
by families, and over time, the households
shrank, as children moved away and
spouses died. Nowadays, a single elderly
resident could be joined by a child moving
back or a care-giver living part time in the
unit. Thinking about how the residential units
might be retrofitted or adapted to flexibly
accommodate these changes is a yet to be
fully investigated design opportunity.
JC
Your work has tended toward what
one might call everyday urbanismand
along with it, tended toward participatory,
bottom-up approaches. What would you say
to someone critical of participationsay,
Markus Miessen (who is also in this issue)
or some skeptical as to whether things are as
rosy as the images you present?
IP
Were working on a book called The
socio
Arsenal of Exclusion & Inclusion: its far from
rosy. The book is a sort of dictionary of 101
weapons that segregate and integrate.
Whats depressing is how much easier it
has been to identify the former. The amount
of creativity that our architects, planners,
policy-makers, developers, real estate
brokers, and neighborhood associations
have put into keeping undesirables out
of communities that have good schools,
good jobs, escalating property values,
clean air, and all the other things that we
all want and deserve equal access to, is
nothing short of astonishing. The result is
metropolitan areas with twenty-year life
expectancy differences between the poorest,
blackest neighborhoods and the wealthiest,
whitest neighborhoods. The result is cities
whose high school graduation rates are 40
percent lower than those of the suburbs that
surround them.
We do believe in bottom-up,
participatory approaches, but obviously,
such approaches arent all that is needed to
address some of the larger problems that we
face. To make our metropolitan areas more
 Interboro Partners

equitable, were not averse to big, top-down,

non-participatory policies. Wealthy, white
suburban communities like the ones you find
in Westchester County, NY arent going to
participate in affirmatively furthering fair
housing, not without the threat of penalty.
That is to say, theres a time and a place
to be rosy, and a time and a place to be mad
as hell.
thresholds 40

Images, drawings and text courtesy Interboro Partners.

***
Interboro Partners is a New York City-based architecture,
planning, and research firm. Interboro has won many awards for
its innovative projects, including the MoMA PS1 Young Architects
Program, the Architectural Leagues Emerging Voices and Young
Architects Awards, and the New Practices Award from the AIA
New York Chapter. Interboros forthcoming book The Arsenal
of Exclusion & Inclusion will be published by Actar in 2012.
Interboro is Tobias Armborst, Daniel DOca, and Georgeen
Theodore.

208
UNCOM-
MON
GROUND:
Aether, Body, and
Commons

Zissis Kotionis
 Zissis Kotionis
Urban Ground
We understand ground as something that
sustains and supports human life. With human
development, this ground has manifested
as concrete slabs, evident in dense, supra-
national urban networks, as noted by Michel
Serres. 1 Given the concrete slab density over
the Athens Basin, the extensive constructed
surface of the modern city along with the
earthly substrata that support it should also
be considered integral parts of the citys thick
ground. Therefore, the thick ground of Athens
encompasses a few tens of meters in the light,
to the height of an average apartment building,
and a few meters in the dark, to the depth of
the earliest human traces. Below the current
surface are older ground levels that due to
archaeological digs, constant construction,
and subsequent re-filling, go down to minus
thresholds 40
ten meters. Above stands an urban mass that
usually does not exceed 20 meters, composed
of a few floors of concrete slabsin cross
section, a total of 30 meters. Postulating a
ground fraction, the constructed urban mass
in central Athens would be located above the
fraction bar, while archaeological sites would
be located below.
Deterritorialization
Air space between and above the
apartment buildings in cross section could be
overtaken by dense networks bearing heavy
flows of information. Via these networks,
language and code-based human activities are
transferred to a space beyond the ground:
1 Michel Serres, The Natural Contract (Ann Arbor, MI: University
of Michigan Press, 1995).
they are deterritorialized. However, according
to its political definition, deterritorialization
means taking away control and order from
a land or territory already established and
politically organized. In this sense, Athens
has already been undergoing a phase of
intense deterritorialization due to continuous
interventions of the global financial system
in the past few years. One might say that the
seat of the political system in Athens is being
unseated and transferred to global air space,
above the city and beyond national borders.
Urban Ground Cross Section
A topological model of the urban ground
can be symbolized in a straight line, which
separates the world of appearances to an above
and a below it the form of a fraction Fig. 1. The
topology of above and below
Fig. 1
defines a space of lightthe space of
terrestrial lifeand a dark space beneath,
resistant and unapproachable. The space
below, along with the grounds crust, could be
called the common, referring to collectively
shared surface and subter-ranean resources.
In Athens, the common includes history by
means of buried artifacts brought to light by
archaeology, and fair weather which allows for
extended stays outdoors. As common ground
contains both history and knowledge, both
ancient culture and modern cultivation, it can
be perceived as both a literal and metaphorical
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 UNCOMMON GROUND

cultivation ground. The thickness of the
common can be symbolized as C and placed
in the denominator of the ground fraction Fig. 2
involved in, but also exists above, all human
activity. Aether is not only a conveyor of
weather but also a vector of communication,
potential, language, ideas, and even illness,
and as such can be considered an artificial
common. It remains, however, the region
where cross-territorial power (i.e., global
or deterritorialized) is exercised. There is a
fundamental distinction between the bodily
element of humans and buildings and the

C fluidity of aether: the bodily is material while

aether is not. A line of materialitylike a slab
of concrete vertically separates terrestrial
Fig. 2
common from celestial, bodily from aethereal. The
aethereal is defined as hyper-ground and placed
In the space above the ground line, the in the numerator of the fraction as A Fig. 4.
city represents terrestrial activity. Within the
city, human bodies and their objects, such as
buildings and cars, are in constant inter-

A
action. The bodily is inherent in both these
human bodies and their objects. We could,

socio
therefore, refer to all terrestrial activity
taking place above ground as the bodily,
symbolized as B, placing it in the numerator
of the ground fraction Fig. 3. Additionally, B
common characteristics of its buildings could
be used to define a citys bodily uniqueness. aethereal / bodily Fig. 4

A polykatoikia (typical apartment building)

in Athens, for example, demonstrates a
distinctive physicality.
Thus, the complex fraction A/B/C is
proposed where the line of the ground is the
fraction bar, the common is the denominator,
and the numerator is a fraction with the
aethereal as numerator and the bodily as

B denominator Fig. 5.

A
C
B
Fig. 3
bodily / common

In an attempt to dissociate the sky from

C
its metaphysical dimension, the term aether
Fig. 5
will be used for the element that is both

211
 Zissis Kotionis
This complex fraction is used to represent
an archaeological cross section of the thick
ground of modern-day Athens.
By intersecting the vertical plane of
the A/B/C fraction with a horizontal plane
representing the peoplepermanent and
temporary residents of the cityor, in other
words, by further investigating the bodily,
we can there locate a historic transition from
the concept of the people to that of the
multitude 2 Fig. 6.
A
B ideological nucleus of Athens. Single-family
mu
ltit
ud
e
op
le
pe
C
thresholds 40
aethereal / bodily / common Fig. 6
This combination of the horizontal flow of
multitude with the vertical A/B/C will provide
a basis for examination of the thick ground of
Athens and its potential reformation.
People, Family, and the
Apartment Building
In Athenss recent history, certain
three-word political slogans have been
repeatedly used. These political triptychs can
be construed through the A/B/C topological
triptych. During the years of the military
dictatorship (1967-1974), the slogan used
by the junta was Country, Family, Religion.
The term country constitutes the common
ground strata (C), the second term family
involves the bodily (B), and the third term
religion refers to the elusive aether (A). If
in terms of location we assume the bodily
to represent the thick stratum of apartment
212
buildings, the coincidence of apartment
building and family, in terms of the bodily,
emerges Fig. 7.
christians religion A
greeks family B
greece motherland C
Fig. 7
Family is often seen as the social and
units have been the basic social content of
the polykatoikia. However, recent findings
challenge this notion: in demographic
terms, Athens and its extended center are
rapidly diverging from the traditional three-
generation nuclear family model. Single
senior citizens, students, single parent
families, and single immigrant populations are
adopting communal residential schemes (i.e.,
multitudes) that comprise social groupings
that differ from the typical family now residing
in more privileged environs on the citys
periphery. As a result of this shift, the apart-
ment building is separating from the family at
the same time that the people are retreating
and giving their place over to the metropolitan
multitude. And while the antithesis between
the concept of the people and of the multitude
is expressed through major disparities in
Athenss interior, building shells and their
typologies resist, demonstrating a paradox:
while apartment vacancies are increasing, so
are homelessness numbers.
Multitude
Following the 1974 political changeover
in Greece, the military dictatorships slogan
 UNCOMMON GROUND

Country, Family, Religion was replaced the unique body of the demonstrator, in
with Bread, Education, Freedom which has contrast to demonstrations where action is the
dominated since. In this new triptych, the result of a collective effort and is controlled by
close association of the common (C) with the the whole Fig. 9. The slogan then coined
country is diminished. The bread as common,
though it encompasses the territoriality of
cultivation, does not establish any type of land
possession. Moreover, the term education
replaces the family as an element of the
fraction (B), reminding us that education is
the main communal aspiration of the new
urban body. Finally, in terms of the aethereal
(A), the potential of religion is replaced by
enlightenments call to freedom Fig. 8. Fig. 9

was Cops, Pigs, Murderers. As opposed to

Bread, Education, Freedom which expresses
an aspiration, all constituent parts of this new
freedom A triptych convey rage and an obsession with
the bodily. A three-part topology of the bodily,
education B
it coincides with the belly in the previously

socio
mentioned cross section of the city (B), Fig. 10.
bread C

Fig. 8

cops B
In December 2008, the riots in central
Athens resulted in significant damage to
the city which remained beyond political
pigs B
control for a few hours. Moreover, for the first
time, a large number of resident immigrants
murderers B
participated along with the local population.
This conflagration signified a radical transfor- Fig. 10
mation of the citys political subject. In the
disposition of power, it was not the native The multitudes demonstration constitutes
populationas was common until thenthat a grounding in the purely corporeal. On the
played a leading role but, rather, the multitude. other hand, the frenzied deterritorialization of
Toni Negri defines the multitude and its financial and political sectors is symbolically
dynamic through references to the body
noting, the multitude is a multitude of bodies;
it expresses power not only as a whole but also
as singularity.3 Indeed, in the arrangement
of those that took part in the uprising, one 2 See Toni Negri, Pour une dfinition ontologique de la
can note both the total and the individual multitude, Multitudes, no. 9 (May/June 2002): 3648.
3 Negri, Pour une dfinition ontologique de la multitude,
action of the singularity as an activation of 3648.

213
 Zissis Kotionis

expressed in the tripartite name of its foremost apartment unit can be inset through vertically
champion, the International Monetary infilling the slab structure Fig. 12.4
Fund (IMF). The international domain of
this organization, in combination with the
potential of the monetary power it wields,
consigns the I-M-F triptych to the domain of
the aethereal (A), Fig. 11.

international A
monetary A

fund A

Fig. 11

The absorption of the multitudes political

expression by the bodily (B) and the
thresholds 40

subordination of political processes by the

aethereal (A) compress urban life into solid
wholes that continuously move away from
each other. As they become increasingly
polarized, the public as a fundamental
constituent of urban life withdraws into the
dark of the earth. The thick ground becomes
solid and single-layered. How can this ominous
shrinking of the political topology be reversed?
At the same time, withdrawal of the family
leaves a void in the citys space, similar to an
apartment being vacated, between individual
and society. Which structure in place of the
apartment building can host the bipolar
singularity-multitude social construct? To
answer these questions, we must review and
transform the structure of the apartment
building to find a suitable tectonic housing model.
Fig. 12
The dwelling, free of internal partitions, is
essentially a large room. This single space
is able to receive all of the micro-programs
from singularities, which can be individuals
or evolving cohabitation schemes adopted by
the metropolitan mass. As the outline of the
housing unit slips from the slab/base, the slab
hangs in mid-air among the units, seeking a
new role Fig. 13. It finds that role by establishing
common or intermediate levels

Multistructure

In the apartment building, equidistant

slabs according to the dom-i-no tectonic
system define intermediate spaces in which an
Fig. 13

214
 UNCOMMON GROUND

between the units. These are the levels of
the common (C) that hang between units,
vertically transposing common ground. In this
case, the common, beyond being private or
public, can be allotted for urban gardening,
outdoor living, or the production of clean
energy. Construction of common slabs results
in the creation of a hyper-ground, expanding
the urban ground and reconstituting it with
the bodily and the aethereal.5
And so, an axiom emerges: The more that
Athenss building structure recombines and
increases the complexity and co-existence
of A, B, and C, the more that the multitude
appropriates the city in terms of biopolitical
integration Fig. 14.
(B), and the aethereal (A). The objective
is to multiply fractional relations of A/B/C
vertically to produce a complex urban
porosity. This porosity refers to the bioclimatic
dimension of architecture, as well as to the
political dimension of cohabitation. Moreover,
the common underground of Athens also
falls within its terms of reference. An increase
of porosity downward results in expanded
archeological digs with simultaneous freeing
of the ground: multistructure gains height
as it frees up ground, archaeo-logical and
otherwise FigS. 15, 16.

A
B
B B
C

socio
A C

C A B

Fig. 14

Conversely, the more that mono-cultivation

of the bodily or the aethereal dominates,
the more that the multitudes estrangement Fig. 15
increases.
In research regarding a structural
formulation for the multitude, a syntactic
principle of maximum intermingling for A,
B, and C takes primacy. The structure that
can maximize intermingling is one able to
foster maximum vertical amalgamation
of these three factors. A new formulation,
multistructure, can reformulate ground
relations and is proposed in place of the
apartment building formulation. Under
4 Here, if we consider apartment cavity walls wedged between
the topological terms of the A/B/C urban the concrete slabs and observe the cross section up close,
cross section, this new structure allows we notice a structural motif of alternating structural units (the
bricks) and interspaced slabs.
intermingling of the common (C), the bodily 5 For a video demonstration, see http://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=EXvUZ1QTn40.

215
 Zissis Kotionis
thresholds 40

FIG. 16

***
Dr. Zissis Kotionis is an architect practicing in Greece and
is Professor and Head in the Department of Architecture
at the University of Thessaly. He has published five books
on architectural theory and urban culture, and his projects
and buildings have been published and award winning
in Greece and abroad. He is also involved in artistic
performances and installations in public art practices.
In 2010 he was Commissioner of Greece in the Venice
Biennale.

216
 Edens,
Islands,
Rooms
Amrita Mahindroo
 Amrita Mahindroo

All at once, they were the hollow

mold from which the image of
modernity was cast. Here, the
century mirrored with satisfaction
its most recent past. Here was the
retirement home for infant prodigies.
W
 alter Benjamin, The Arcades Project 1

1
Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, trans.
Rolf Tiedman (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1999), 874.
2
David Harvey, A Brief History of Grow, Asia, Grow
Neoliberalism (Oxford, UK: Oxford University
thresholds 40

Press, 2005), 76.

3 In contemporary economic development literature,
Jonathan Ablett et al., The Bird of Gold: The Asias middle class is exalted as a savior of global capitalism.2
Rise of Indias Consumer Market (London:
McKinsey Global Institute, 2007), 8. Today, the size of Indias middle class hovers around 50
4 million people, and this figure is expected to grow tenfold
John Harris, The Onward March of the
Great Indian Middle Class, Hindu, August by 2025.3 By the end of these 13 years, India is expected to
15, 2007. rank fifth as a world consumer market, coming in just behind
5
Simon Cox, The Fastest Lap: Indias the United States, Japan, China, and the United Kingdom.
Economy Is Racing with Chinas, However, what has been offered up as the middle class is by
Economist, November 22, 2010.
6 no means a sociological category. Rather, it is an aspirational
The privately-owned public interior is standard whereby Indias various publics are unified solely
defined here as an enclosed urban space
accessible to the public, but owned by, a through their increasing capacity to consume goods and
private entity. services. Consequently, we must ask a critical question: Can the
7
Manfredo Tafuri, Architecture and Utopia: neoliberal economics that are encouraging Asias middle class
Design and Capitalist Development to grow, grow, grow be critiqued as a type of neo-colonialism?
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1976), 46-48.
8 While it implies a new variety of unity, this middle class
Neera Adarkar, The Lost Century: How the in fact encompasses a broader spectrum of publics than its
Textile Workers of Mumbai Got Short Shrift,
in The Mumbai Reader: 2007 (Mumbai: Urban predecessor.4 The state, which would otherwise provide its
Design Research Institute, 2007), 137. various publics with political unity, is seen as a hindrance
9
Mark Crinson, Empire Building: Orientalism to their progress and is therefore encouraged to take an
and Victorian Architecture (London: increasingly peripheral role in the countrys development.5
Routledge, 1996), 230.
10 Implications from the states lack of interference are becoming
Nauzer Bharucha, From Mills to Malls, The most apparent in the evolving form of Indias cities. The spatial
Sky Is the Limit, Times of India, November
24, 2003. counterpart to this aspirational standard is thus tainted by
11 the reality that it exists as a privately-owned public interior.6
Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, In recent years, neoliberal economics have enabled individual
1958), 49

218
 Edens, Islands, Rooms
developers to swallow enough terrain for the production
of micro-cities whose forms exist somewhere between big
architecture and small city. These urban enclaves develop
outside the states auspices and, despite the presence of a
democratic political structure, they escape public control. The
city, which was according to Manfredo Tafuris late-twentieth-
century, liberal democratic definition an architectural enabler
of urban diversity,7 is thus homogenized by the scale of
contemporary architectural developments. In this manner the
city is reduced to a handful of variables largely contingent on
the profitability of a terrain. A dangerous byproduct of this
formal homogeneity is that it stipulates a singular vision of
public, created by few and aspired to by many.
Islands
Following the 1982 Great Bombay Textile Strike, the
collapse of the textile industry in Mumbai resulted in the
vacating of many mill sites in the neighborhoods of Parel and
Lower Parel. As the city rode a great wave of development,
it mobilized a sizeable managerial class and left unemployed
a large working class. This was one public which found itself
without a mtier as the city chose to build itself on the
exploitation of a different resource. While the abandonment of
the working class has been attributed in part to the lengthy
demands of the trade unions, the root of the problem was
the rising value of the mills land.8 Many mill owners found
that selling mill compounds for real estate development was
significantly more lucrative then rehabilitating the mills for
continual use. So began the great mill monopoly.
In 1992, the first of the islandscreated out of the
Phoenix Mills Compoundswas boarded up with coming
soon billboards as the city anticipated its arrival. It marked the
beginning of a heated battle between two distinct publics: the
displaced working class and an economically powerful urban
elite. At one point in history, the imposition of form and of a
certain aesthetic was considered to be an act of imperialism.9
Now, to deny the developing world the Western image of
progress was also rendered an imperial imposition. The skyline
of Parel thus emerged in a form consistent with that of any
other megacity in the developing world. While the skyline
was much discussed and applauded10, the ground plane, that
most valuable terrain upon which two publics might face one
another, remained ignored.11 Instead, these publics were firmly
re-categorized as those who met the citys future aspirations,
and those who had yet to do so.
219
TIMELINE
January 1982
The Great Bombay Textile Strike begins.
Trade union leader Dutta Samant brings
250,000 mill workers into conflict with the
Bombay Mill Owners Association, causing
the textile industry to shut down for
almost 18 months.
1983
After a prolonged and destabilizing
confrontation, the strike collapses with
no concessions obtained for the workers.
The majority of the over 80 mills in
Central Mumbai close during and after the
strike, leaving more than 150,000 workers
unemployed.1
1984
Prime Minister Indira Gandhis appointees
make a budget provision of $89.2 million
for mill owners to modernize mills, but
mill owners have already begun considering
the real estate value of their lands.2
1991
As mill closure parallels government
reforms towards liberalization in the
early 90s, Finance Minister Manmohan
socio
Singh pushes to end government
investment in manufacturing industries.
The government, under the Development
Control Regulation (DCR), allows mill
owners to apply for permits to change
their land from Industrial to Commercial
and Residential3 if one-third of the mill
land be surrendered to the Maharastra
Housing and Area Development Authority
(MHADA) for public housing and one-
third be given to the Bombay Municipal
Corporation (BMC) for public open space.
Through a number of loopholes, mill
owners are able to forgo the one-third rule,
resulting in the demolition of a number of
mills and the sale of all land for real estate
development.
1994
The Bombay First Initiative4 advocates
deregulation of land development for the
improvement of the business environment
in Mumbai and the increase of foreign
direct investment.
19901995
The skyline of Parel changes rapidly with
the opening of Phoenix Towers, Kalpataru
Towers, and Belvedere Court. The situation
expands beyond the mill workers to a
general issue of gentrification in the area.
 Amrita Mahindroo

The largest remaining island in the neighborhood is

12
State space is here defined as designed
public space for recreational use, as
opposed to consequent public space such
as footpaths.
13
Anuradha Mathur, Neither Wilderness nor
Home: The Indian Maidan, in Recovering
Landscapes: Essays in Contemporary
Landscape Architecture, ed. James Corner
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton Architectural Press,
1999), 58.
14
Ibid., 61.
thresholds 40
laden with Mumbais economic history. Located in Lower
Parel, it has for decades fed Mumbais economy through the
India United Textile Mill Fig. 1 . This 72hectare island presently
employs over 5,000 people whose voices will not be invited
into a conversation about its future development. To make
these voices audible, their argument needs to be grounded by
a public space which would stand as a beacon of democratic
power. This state space12 would level the playing field with
a monumental void, a maidan Fig. 2 . Long heralded as one of
the most important types of public space in the Indian city,
the maidan is a space so firmly defined by the absence of an
aesthetic that it can be nothing but democratic:
its power lies in the sheer scale of its emptiness
and lack of embellishment.13 Yet the state of
twentieth-century capitalist development is
such that the building of these dramatic urban
voids has not been entertained since the early
nineteenth century. Mumbais existing maidans
are considered lungs in the hyper-density of the
city; they host a series of different programmatic

functions, ranging from the cricket pitch to the

political rally to the communal prayer space. They
Fig. 1 P
 arel Mills. Courtesy of and copyright Swapnil
Bhole Pukar. are embedded within the citys culture as the
prime spaces of civic proprietorship.14
According to the logic of neoliberal
economics, the creation of this void on terrain
ripe with developmental potential would
require the concomitant construction of a walled
enclave funded by private enterprise. These walls
would represent the sad reality by which the
contemporary Indian city is increasingly forced
to barter territory in order to achieve many of
its infrastructural goals. And yet in light of this
Fig. 2 O
 val Maidan, Mumbai, January 2011. Courtesy of reality, a new ground plane could take shape as a
and copyright the author.
space of possibility. This room, defined as much by
the freedom of its void as by the financial power
behind the walls which define its enclosure, is the
simplest module of both urban and architectural
space Fig. 3 . It would become politically charged
should it initiate the integration of a broader
public into an enclave by mere cause of its design,
subsequently revealing an irony latent within
neoliberal logic: that the production of the
room forces the city to pay for the absence
of development.
Fig. 3 M
 aidan as Room in Parel. Courtesy of and copyright
the author.

220
 Edens, Islands, Rooms

Rooms 1996
Under pressure from the public, the
MHADA Chief Minister Manohar Joshi
The room as a concept thus opens a dialogue about announces the decision to suspend
the DCR and appoints a conservation
the relevance of public space in todays Indian city and the
committee headed by Charles Correa to
conditions under which it is to be produced. While the maidan design an integrative development plan for
typifies state space, its opposite would be for the privately mill lands.5

owned public interior manufactured to act as a mechanism 1996

for upward mobility. The interior spaces therefore reinstate The Correa Report is a collective effort
by architects, planners, and mill activists
an alternative trait of publicness: the shared use of space that to create a redevelopment strategy for the
allows for a variety of projectionsfor some this is marked neighborhood. This report is intended to
by aspiration and for others by the ambivalence of economic provide strategies to protect the rights
of mill workers as the area undergoes
conquest. Typologically, the synthesis of this micro-city as gentrification.
an idea is most evident in the
museum Fig. 4 . It is composed
of two planes: the slab and
the urban mat. A greatly
misunderstood monolith of
architectures recent past, the
slab is here exploited for its
formal properties as various
typological conditions fuse along
its length. The slab gives the
walls the thickness within which

socio
the curated public of the enclave
is housed. The urban mat, on
the contrary, is a porous ground
Fig. 4 Museum. Courtesy of and copyright the author with
floor belonging to a much broader Luca De Gaetano.
local public. The mat thus serves
as a mechanism by which the
detached interior of the enclave
can be contaminated with a little
Mumbai-ness. The perverse
interiority of these walls, which
have an anti-urban past both
formally and socially, further
allow for a re-structuring of the
city in the interest of protecting
the sanctity of the void.
The void therefore
anticipates a heterogeneity of
uses and publics which the
object alone would not have
been able to create. A microcosm
of enfiladed rooms, the museum
resembles a hallowed exhibition
space as much as it does an
Ikea Fig. 5 . It exemplifies the Fig. 5 Museum Type. Courtesy of and copyright the author.

221

15
Benjamin, The Arcades Project, 877.
16
Rem Koolhaas, Bigness or the Problem
of Large, in S,M,L,XL, ed. Rem Koolhaas
and Bruce Mau (New York: Monacelli Press,
1995), 494-516.
17
This malaise is defined here as such because
it enables the architect with a variety of
the God Complex, which is the source
of utopias. This is a cause of regression
in architectural thought because it goes
against the grain of the liberal democratic
formation of the citywherein many forms
have to co-exist, and therefore cannot be
authored under the umbrella of one political
opinion. See Tafuri, Architecture and Utopia,
134-137.
18
Stanford Anderson, Quasi-Autonomy in
Architecture: The Search for an In-Between,
Perspecta 33 (2002): 30-37.
thresholds 40
Amrita Mahindroo
contemporary predicament in which the traditional datum
of the city finds itself added to the list of nostalgia-laden
theme parks as economics insist on a more dramatic scale
of building. These datums nevertheless humanize the voids
and enable a form of urbanism wherein differences in
publics (and the socio-economic categories they embody)
are nested within one another as a series of concentric urban
scales. With the abolition of corridors and passageways, each
space, from the smallest antechamber to the largest salon,
becomes a destination of its own. The implications of the
reductive, aesthetic homogeneity of an enclave are thus
avoided not by creating forms which physically embody
difference, but rather by creating the voids within which
social and economic difference can emerge. As each room
aggregates (each typifying a different urban condition), they
collectively retain the aesthetic coherence of a larger form
while allowing for negotiation between the absolute form of
the architectural object and the formlessness of the liberal,
democratic city.
Fig. 6 Rooms on Island. Courtesy of and copyright the author.
222
 Edens, Islands, Rooms
In stark contrast to the excesses of this collective lies
the maidan Fig. 6 . This space, characterized by a generous,
untended field, creates a type of utilitarian void in the center
of the dense, urban fabric of the city. It is a state space of
civility, which has the capacity to collect a public that is as
undefined as the void itself. The maidans sudden interiority
also points to the extreme market-friendly measures that the
achievement of this simple outcome requires. It stands as both
a manifesto to voids and a critique of their new price tag.
What Benjamin saw in the Parisian arcades,15 and
Koolhaas in suburban bigness,16 was the expression of
economy manifest in the culture of a society at a particular
point in history. These rooms, Edenic islands of much-desired
voids in the city, would represent an emerging expression of
economy within the culture of Mumbai. They plead, perhaps
too idealistically, for a kind of quid pro quo between private
enterprise and the state, revealing the absurdity of neoliberal
economics. Nevertheless, as each is nested within its successor,
they seek to provoke the collision of two distinct planes and of
the respective publics they embody.
Voids
When Tafuri lay bare the fundamental disjunction
between utopian formal visions of the city and liberal
democratic processes, he hoped to cure the architectural
discipline of the malaise which comes with the naive
belief that forms are an unproblematic medium for social
engineering.17 Tafuris anti-participatory approach, which later
came to be defined as the project of autonomy, found a great
following in the last 30 years and its increasing popularity
has comfortably paralleled global economic reforms towards
liberalization as socio-political concerns have been left to the
periphery of the discourse. While the reign of the autonomous
project has been powerful, its durability is questionable.
Following a major economic collapse, the Wests recent,
conscious shift in priorities towards social responsibility may
forecast a similar turn in the developing world. As the ivory
tower collapses around the architect, we are all too aware of
the disciplines struggle for relevance.
In the shadow of this looming future, this argument
insists on the importance of political participation through
formal discourse. Allegoric utopias and manifestos aside,
today participation seems dependant on how well one can
bypass the rules of neoliberal economics unnoticed. Quiet
participation, or what has been theorized as quasi-autonomy,18
223
1998
Following the report, the government
finally assures the textile workers union
that regulations are being modified
to include their demands. In the end,
however, only a fraction of the MHADA
housing is reserved for displaced textile
workers. The remainder is made available
for general sale.6
2001
The DCR is revised in favor of the private
textile mills, allowing them to officially
ignore the one-third rule for the purposes
of real estate development. This results
in the forced eviction of a number of mill
workers living in the chawls, or tenements,
on the former mill sites.
February 2005
Of the 170 acres of private mill land sold
for development, the BMC and MHADA
receive a combined 6%, or 10 acres, as a
concession for the plight of mill workers
based on the revised DCR of 2001.7
May 2005
The Bombay Environmental Action Group
(BEAG) files a petition under the Supreme
Court to stop all construction of mill lands
pending investigation of issues such as
ownership and validity of the 2001 DCR.8
socio
June 2005
The National Textile Corporations
Mumbai Textile Mill is sold for a staggering
$160 Million to the Delhi-based real estate
giant DLF Group.9
March 2006
On March 7th, the Supreme Court rules
in favor of the property developers, stating
that all changes which were made to the
DCR in 2001 are constitutionally valid.10
2011
The average three-bedroom apartment
in Parel is today valued at $2.2 million,
comparable with Midtown Manhattan.
 Amrita Mahindroo

Endnotes for Timeline is a category of practice which re-engages the sociological

1 conditions that the architectural discipline has so comfortably
Shiv Kumar, Maharashtra May Give ignored for the past 30 years from within the constraints of
More Mills Land for Public Use,
Tribune, May 5, 2005. the market. While the project of autonomy may have found its
2 urban counterpart in the clustering of introspective object-like
Adarkar, The Lost Century, 139.
3 icons, quiet participation may well attribute new value to the
Ibid., 141. absence of development through typological conditions, which
4
The Bombay First Initiative is a government glorify the idea of a collective space. For this kind of political
organization affiliated with the Bombay action, the void itself is the new icon.
Chamber of Commerce and Industry
responsible for generating public-private
partnerships for development and
infrastructure.
5
Peter Winch, From Girangaon to Planet
GodrejHow the Mill Lands Got Away,
in Mapping Mumbai (Mumbai: Urban
Design Research Institute, 2005), 30.
6
Adarkar, The Lost Century, 149.
7
Ibid., 150.
8
Winch, From Girangaon to Planet
Godrej, 32.
9
Kumar, Maharashtra May Give More
Mills Land for Public Use, 5.
thresholds 40

10
Winch, From Girangaon to Planet
Godrej, 32.

***
Amrita Mahindroo is principal of Droo
Projects, which explores the changing
role of the architect from delivery of
a service to delivery of developments
as products. This has taken on the
form of several projects that sit at the
intersection of architecture and real
estate development. She holds a Masters
in Architecture and Urbanism from MIT
and a BArchHons from the University
of Melbourne, and was formerly project
architect at Atelier Seraji and Shigeru
Ban Architects. Amrita has lectured and
been published at UCLA, University
of Oklahoma, UNC, and MIT, on her
research on the nexus between emerging
technologies, economics, future building
typologies, and urban form.

224
The Prince:
Bjarke
Ingelss
Social
Conspiracy
Justin fowler
 Justin fowler
Our world could be much
more accommodating,
ecological and enjoyable
than it is; our cities could
be more fit for human life,
more adaptive to the specific
climates where they are
located. The reason theyre
not is that there are interests
that are unconcerned with
the common good, and not
invested in creating the best
world possible. By claiming
that these interests have
formed an unholy alliance
and are systematically killing
architectures protagonists,
perhaps its possible to get a
bigger audience interested in
understanding the challenges
thresholds 40
faced by architects. Theres
nothing like a good old
fashion conspiracy theory
to get peoples attention;
whining architects do not
exactly make a bestseller.
Bjarke Ingels
S udden and relentless
reform never sits well with
entrenched interests and
power brokers. Thats why
true reform is so hard to
achieve. But with the support
of the citizens of Alaska, we
shook things up. And in short
order we put the government
of our state back on the side
of the people.
Sarah Palin
Few architects working today attract
as much public acclaim and disciplinary
head-scratching as Bjarke Ingels. Having
recently arrived in New York, this self-
proclaimed futurist is undertaking his own
form of Manifest Destiny, reminding American
architects how to act in their own country.
While his practice is often branded by the
architectural establishment as nave and
opportunistic, such criticism is too quick to
conflate Ingels outwardly optimistic persona
with the brash formal agenda it enables. In the
current economic climate, there are
any number of gifted purveyors of form
languishing in New York City. Despite this,
Ingels has somehow managed to get away
with proposing a pyra-midal perimeter block
in midtown New York Fig. 1, a looped pier in St.
Petersburg Florida Fig. 2,and an art center in
Park City, Utah massed as torqued log cabin
while maintaining a straight face. How, then, is
his mode of operation considered uncritical by
so many within the discipline? Clearly, Ingels
has figured something out about harnessing
and transforming the social and American
architects would do well to identify what that
happens to be. In this search for a method, it
might help to be a little paranoid. So, in the
manner of any good conspiracy theorist, lets
go to the chalkboard, or rather,
the diagram...
1
a wise prince should establish
himself on that which is in his
own control and not in that
of others; he must endeavour
only to avoid hatred, as is noted.
Niccolo Machiavelli 3
Part of the answer may lie with Ingelss
brand of populism, which is as much about
2 1 Bjarke Ingels, Bjarke Ingels: Interview by Jeffrey Inaba,
Klat, no. 4 (Fall 2010): 89.
2 Sarah Palin, Acceptance Speech at the Republican
National Convention, September 3, 2008.
3 Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince, trans. W. K. Marriott
(Costa Mesa, CA: Plain Label Books, 1952), 92.
226
 The Prince

Fig. 1 BIG, West 57th, New York City. Image by BIG and Glessner, courtesy of BIG.

socio

Fig. 2 BIG, St. Petersburg Pier. Image by BIG and MIR, courtesy of BIG.

227
 Justin fowler
being social as it is about the social. From
his archicomic monograph (now published
for the iPad) to his recent appearance in a
number of glossy, culture magazines, Ingels
is cutting out the middleman and bringing his
message directly to the people. Bred as an
insider (first at OMA, and then at Columbia
and Harvard), he has since gone rogue by
positioning himself outside of the elitist
currents that make up avant-garde practice.
The message is that Ingels is of the people
and therefore his work has the peoples best
interests at heart. This Palin-esque sleight
of hand is not only powerful as a means to
attract clients, but also to provide him with
tactical agility. Architects have always tried
to slip design elements past their clients
through flattery, but Ingels goes beyond the
timid hide-the-medicine-in-the-applesauce
approach. His is one of radical transparency,
quite literally telling the client everything in
order to free his forms from political oversight
and its requisite headaches. Ingelss mentor,
thresholds 40
Rem Koolhaas, remains a critical darling
because despite all of his fashionable
rhetoric, architectural insiders consider him a
sinister figure. While the most straightforward
reading would suggest that Ingels has
jettisoned the schizophrenic attitude of
the latter in favor of a singular, wide-eyed
deliriousness, one might also view his project
as being far more complex in its coupling of
populism and Machiavellian exceptionalism
the two seemingly opposite poles of American
political thought.
Ingelss paean to optimism, Yes is More,
opens by suggesting a direct parallel
with Obamas campaign slogan, Yes we
can. While Obamas phrase served as a
stand-in for his goal of consensus-building
4 Bjarke Ingels, Yes is More (Cologne: Evergreen, 2009),
1415.
5 R. E. Somol, Green Dots 101, in Hunch, no. 11
(Winter 2007): 29.
6 Bjarke Ingels, Bjarke Ingels, 94.
pragmatism, Ingelss slogan suggests excess
over compromise, or perhaps excess via the
rhetoric of compromise. Demand to resolve
the impossible and something interesting
might emerge: What if design could be the
opposite of politics? Not by ignoring conflict,
but by feeding from it. A way to incorporate
and integrate differences, not through
compromise or by choosing sides, but by
tying conflicting interests into a Gordian
knot of new ideas.4 While the Gordian
allusion may be apt, it seems that Ingels
is simultaneously playing the roles of both
Gordius and Alexander, weaving difference
into a coherent formal puzzle while cutting
through politics with a decisive stroke.
In Taming the Prince, Harvey Mansfield
locates this political ambivalence as a latent
Machiavellian thread inherent in the executive
branch of the US government. Unlike an
authoritarian ruler who exerts power based
solely by claiming the right to do so, the
executive executes decisions on behalf of the
sovereign who have elected to abide by such
rulings. Being of the people allows a leader
an exceptional capacity to take decisive
actions while remaining distanced from their
outcomes. This rhetorical latitude is a double-
edged sword, being both extra-constitutional
(outside) and grounded in its formal provision
(inside). For Mansfield, the ambivalence of the
executive is the positions greatest strength. It
is absolute formal power in a populist guise.
Curiously, such power can also be considered
performative which, as Robert Somol
suggests, operates in such a way that the
saying of it makes it so.5 Ingelss pragmatic
utopian brand of the performative is its own
kind of Tea Party Expressthat undeniably
revolutionary platform that somehow manages
to reconcile such outwardly incommensurable
positions as tax reduction and increased
military spending into one loud, populist
leviathan. It remains to be seen whether
Ingelss desire to have his cake and eat it too,
or BIGamy,6 is more closely related to the
Tea Partys brand of cognitive dissonance
or some imagined urban win-win scenario
brought to bear through sheer force of will.
But, then again, does it even matter so long
as the strategy pays off?
228
 The Prince

The logo can slip from
foreground to background
as the situation warrants.
R. E. Somol
The unity of the office
[of the President] implies
the possibility, though a
remote one, of an ideal
executive. Such a person
would combine in himself the
ambivalence inherent in the
office, ducking out of sight
and leaping into view when
necessary and appropriate.
And his knowledge... would
encompass the doctrine of
executive power, uniting its
two aspects while justifying
their separation.
Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr. 8
unwilling to relinquish formal control over
the design of the larger plan, Ingels uses the
bluntness of shape to broker a tenuous peace
and gain some degree of maneuverability
7
within this scalar high-wire act. Shape, then,
corresponds to attitude, a mode of operating
that covers for ideological ambivalence.
Contrary to Robert Somols largely de-
politicized conception of shape in which the
non-necessitarian possibility9 of the graphic
allows it to disappear into the background,
Ingelss work demonstrates the efficacy
of shape as an insurgent socio-political
force. Somol perhaps unintentionally hints
at this capacity when he suggests that the
graphic can only be artificially asserted and
subsequently played out.10 In the context
of American executive power, however, the
exceptional assertion is permissible only
through an appeal to necessity and to the
extraordinary circumstances that force a
leader to go beyond the normal call of duty.
For Ingels, the necessity of materializing
his projects requires the construction of a
receptive audience, primed to believe that

socio
the abstraction of the diagram somehow
As with BIGamy, the disruptive potential
corresponds to their experience of the city.
of the Tea Party, like so many populist
Whether post-rationalized or generative, BIGs
movements before it, lies in the directness
diagrams project an attitude of inevitability,
of its attitude rather than the consistency
suggesting that the final form is the necessary
of its positions. Its ideological diversity is
result Fig. 3. While such alibis are not new to
kept in check through cults of personality
the architecture profession, Ingels takes it
and patriotic displays. Likewise, one could
a step further, actively working to shape the
say that the seemingly irreconcilable socio-
social environment within which the final
political issues that Ingels seeks to absorb
project is judgedplacing himself in the
into his work are held together through the
world, so that his forms retain a degree
use of shape. His projects straddle the gulf
of autonomy.
between the scale of the building and of the
urban master plan. Unable to exert building-
scale control over his projects, and conversely

7 Somol, Green Dots 101, 33.

8 Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr., Taming the Prince: The
Ambivalence of Modern Executive Power (Baltimore, MD:
The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), 15.
9 Somol, Green Dots 101, 37. Fig. 3 BIG, West 57th Massing Diagram. Image courtesy of BIG.
10 Ibid., 34.

229
 Justin fowler

Government has the ambivalent From the image of a mountain screen-

task of bringing necessity printed onto the side of his housing complex
in Copenhagen known simply as The
home to the people, so
Mountain Fig. 4, or the projection of the face
that they survive, while of Princess Victoria onto the faade of the
concealing it from them, so Arlanda Hotel, to the use of Lego people
they are happy and innocent. in Lego Towers Fig. 5, Ingels constructs a
Harvey C. Mansfield Jr. 11 graphic social ecology that is as hermetic
as it is self-serving. For all the rhetoric about
embracing a diversity of socio-political and
Bjarke Ingels is a Yes Man.
economic forces, Ingelss work is relational
He rises to the challenge of only within the autonomous social context
just about any demand, be that he has rendered for himself. Within this
it reasonable or otherwise, framework, there is little tangible embrace
with an unqualified Yes. This of the contingency of urban life. Rather, the
value of the work lies in the reductive and
fuels his ambition to absorb
monolithic fiction of the world he presents,
all the political interests and its quality as a plausible alternate reality
surrounding a project and only just removed from the conditions it
to turn them into back- recasts in such a positive light. Ingelss craft is
bending forms that disarm in acting as though this gap doesnt exist. The
the opposition. apparent straightforwardness of his work
Bjarke Ingels 12
thresholds 40

Fig. 4 BIG, The Mountain, Copenhagen. Photo by Carsten Kring, courtesy of BIG.

230
 The Prince
Fig. 5 BIG, Lego Tower. Image courtesy of BIG.
belies the articulation of his negative critique.
In our world, yes is great but no means no.
By subverting the necessity of trade-offs in a
zero sum game, Ingels is offering an internally
coherent conspiracy theory and seeking
converts to share in the BIGamy.
By reframing how we see our world
through the presentation of an exuberant
alternative, he is insuring that we cannot
return from exposure to his visions without
having unwittingly undergone some form
of attitude adjustment that prefigures our
subsequent experiences. It is interesting,
then, that someone who claims to have
the capacity to absorb all differences
within a project can also claim that he has
an opposition to disarm, as the idea
of opposition seems foreign to his win-win
conceptual narrative. The critical potency of
Ingels work, however, comes from this very
project of making the impossible into a viable
alternative through the seeding of an attitude
within the public imagination.
socio
t his idea of the paranoid
of noticing aspects of the
world that other people
dont seeis a very powerful
tool for the architect.
Bjarke Ingels 13
One of the defining features of
any conspiracy is its internal coherence.
Irrespective of the ends, conspiracies perform,
yet how well they perform is a function of the
skill with which these autonomous Gordian
constructs are planted within the collective
consciousness. Such skill underwrites the
soft power of influence. While architects
desire for influence is not new, the strategies
for achieving it have varied widely. They
11 Mansfield, Taming the Prince, 145.
12 Bjarke Ingels, Yes is More, authors note.
13 Bjarke Ingels, Bjarke Ingels, 86.
231
 Justin fowler

often entail an appeal to the architects ability

to manage material and economic efficiency,
effectively abandoning the excess inherent in
any architectural act. Ingels, however, engages
the social so as to justify this excess, using his
own personal brand as a sideshow to secure
autonomy for his exuberant formal agenda. The
bi-polarity of this maneuver reflects at once a
profound sympathy for Koolhaass appropriation
of the Paranoid-Critical method in Delirious
New York as well as an intuitive understanding
of the ambivalence that underwrites American
power structures. If, paradoxically, Ingels has
conspired to pry open a space for division, or
disciplinary autonomy, through a social project
of unity and consensus-building, then an
evolution in his work will emerge when he moves
to free his shapes from the lingering rhetorical
vestiges of populism and examine the role
that form plays in relation to the irreconcilable
political necessities that drove him to conjure
such an ambivalent knot from the start.
thresholds 40

***
Justin Fowler received his MArch from Harvard University
and previously studied Government and the History of Art and
Architecture at the College of William and Mary. He is an assistant
editor ofInvention/Transformation: Strategies for the Qattara/Jimi
Oases in Al Ain(Harvard GSD, 2010) and his writing has appeared
inVolume,Pidgin,Speciale Z Journal,Scapegoat,PIN-UP,Topos,
andConditions, along with book chapters inThe New Urban
Question: Urbanism Beyond Neoliberalism (TU Delft, 2009),Urban
Interventions(Slovart, 2011), andMaterial Design: Informing
Architecture by Materiality(Birkhauser, 2010). He has worked as a
designer for Dick van Gameren Architecten in the Netherlands and
currently manages research and editorial projects at the Columbia
Lab for Architectural Broadcasting (C-Lab) in New York.

232
Beyond
Doing
Good:
Civil Disobedience
as Design Pedagogy

Hannah Rose Mendoza

 Hannah Rose Mendoza
While homeland security in the US
has become a 200 billion dollar enterprise,
support for education, social services, and
justice have been chiseled away.1 The safety
that Americans purchase is not just protection
from immediate threat, but also insulation
from even the mildest of discomforts; from
panhandlers to the possibility that a neighbor
might paint their house a distasteful color.2
The anxiety present in confronting the
unknown, even in activities as seemingly
mundane as trying a new restaurant, is
reinforced by the ever-present sameness that
continually spreads across the American
landscape. In a modern variation on the 1928
campaign promise for stability and progress
represented by a chicken in every pot and a
car in every garage3 we now have a Burger
King at every highway exit.
As capital continues to be accumulated
by a shrinking circle of individuals, their
thresholds 40
tendency to remake the world into a system
for the transfer of wealth meets with less
resistance. Design includes processes through
which paradigms are exposed to strict and
critical scrutiny.4 In this sense, each act of
design is either an act of compliance with
existing systems or an act of disobedience
to those systems. Thus, design education is
uniquely positioned to create a culture in
which future practitioners learn to utilize the
lessons of design and civil disobedience to
inform each other, such that the advancement
of justice becomes fully integrated into
everyday practice.
There are two forms of decision-making
that take place in a democracy: voting and
consensus.5 In a voting democracy, decisions
are made in numbers; in a consensus
democracy, decisions are made through dialog.
Some argue that the peaceful transformation
of conflict through dialog rather than power is
democracy.6 In order for that transformation
to occur, however, the conflict must first be
recognized, and then engaged. Public space
provides the platform for interaction among
parties and issues. In the US, public spaces
234
have been increasingly removed in favor of
purchased expression, inserted into private
spaces on a public scale. Those with the
means to purchase expression at such massive
scales control the issues presented and the
discussion that surrounds them. Therefore,
the conflicts that are addressed either are not
those of the marginalized or do not include
their voices in the process.
Designers play active roles in the
disruption and destruction of public space
through the unquestioning acceptance
of the mandate to create mechanisms for
surveillance, control, and restriction without
careful consideration of the impacts those
mechanisms have on the quality of the spaces
that they have created.7 The combination of
expanded rule sets with the incorporation
of social surveillance technologies acts to
discourage participation by marginalized
members of society. Efforts to create greater
security by preventing homeless from
sleeping in public parks has led to the design
of benches that are oddly angled and highly
exposed, concrete slabs that discourage use
of any kind.8 Only those who have no other
choice occupy spaces that do not support a
humane experience. These spaces become
1 Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster
Capitalism, 1st ed. (New York: Picador, 2008).
2 Edward Blakely, Fortress America: Gated Communities in the
United States (Washington DC: Brookings Institution Press,
1999); Nan Ellin, Shelter from the Storm or Form Follows
Fear and Vice Versa, in The Architecture of Fear (New York:
Princeton Architectural Press, 1997), 13-45.
3 Richard Florida, The Great Reset: How the Post-Crash
Economy Will Change the Way We Live and Work (New York:
Harper Paperbacks, 2011), 130.
4 Nigel Cross, Designerly Ways of Knowing (Basel, Switzerland:
BirkhaeuserPublishers for Architecture, 2007); Bryan Lawson,
What Designers Know (Burlington, MA: Elsevier/Architectural
Press, 2004).
5 Arend Lijphart, Democratic Political Systems: Types, Cases,
Causes, and Consequences, Journal of Theoretical Politics 1,
no. 1 (1989): 33-48.
6 Michael Katz, Susan Verducci, and Gert Biesta, eds.,
Democracy, Education and the Moral Life, 1st ed. (Berlin:
Springer, 2008).
7 Steven Flusty, The Banality of Interdiction: Surveillance,
Control and the Displacement of Diversity, International
Journal of Urban & Regional Research 25, no. 3 (2001): 658-
664.
8 Steven Flusty, Building Paranoia, in The Architecture of Fear
(New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1997), 46-59.
 Beyond Doing Good
areas to move through, or to avoid, rather
than experiential destinations. This failure
to appeal makes it difficult to advocate for
their maintenance and they are allowed to
deteriorate in a continuous cycle of neglect
and avoidance.
A further instance of designs servitude
to capital lies in post-disaster reconstruction.
For example, the disastrous tsunami in Sri
Lanka resulted in villagers surrendering their
beaches to developers rather than rebuilding.
This development required an army of
architects, engineers, and designers, who
competed to participate in this activity. Post-
Katrina, post-9/11, post-Fukushima, and so
on, include stories of clean-slate opportunism
and the re-allocation upward of resources
previously unavailable because of the
original inhabitants. Disaster reconstruction
has become a market in its own right. The
elimination of those who previously stood in
the way of construction of, and profit from,
these gleaming cities are, in fact, acts of social
violence. The fact that in committing these
acts of social violence, designers are doing
exactly what they have been trained to do
is evidence of a structural problem. The
privilege given to profit over justice is not
only present in practice, but also in education.
Education has been reimagined as a business,
and academic capitalism creates students
as customers and faculty as service workers
responsible for delivering what students
believe to be the most valuable content: that
which most directly prepares for entry in the
workforce.9 Despite the design discipliness
increased focus on the commitments
designers should make to social justice, the
curriculum and course content of university
courses across the country often focus heavily
on the transfer of graduates to employers.
In an educational paradigm that equates
success with consumption, commitments to
justice are lost. This failure to move beyond
a detached understanding of the power of
design and integrate the high social and
moral responsibility from the designer into
235
practice and praxis led industrial designer
and educator Victor Papanek to lament that,
designers have become a dangerous breed.10
However, this paradigm can be shifted
in design education. As Felicity Scott has
argued, the disciplines utopian or progressive
potential could only ... be realized on the level
of revolutionary praxis.11 Design, though, has
become a domain of the plausibly deniable
or for the casual do-gooder, but not the
revolutionary. One of the great difficulties of
imagining how design might affect positive
change lies in our failure to question capital.
Efforts to enact change are undertaken within
the existing, market-driven framework,
requiring fantastic mental acrobatics during
even its broadest phase of conception. We
have incorrectly assessed the parameters and
possibilities of design by imagining capital to
be a part of the natural universe, like gravity
or photosynthesis, rather than a human-made
system for regulating interactions. Once the
fracturing, competitive, and elitist capitalist
socio
system is removed from the equation, however,
the landscape before us begins to open up.
Design is a process that allows us to
move beyond addressing a problem as
presented.12 Rather, it is the ability to rework
problems in their entiretyto directly
question and address their motivesthat
allows designers to envision previously
inconceivable solutions. This is not an exercise
in ivory-tower Pollyannaism. We live in our
conceptualizations of reality and rethinking
the world actually changes our experience
of the world. Design transforms what is into
what could be through repeated attempts at
the unprecedented. This creativity, original
ideas and acts of value, requires space in
which failure can occur, as well as changes
9 Louis Menand, The Marketplace of Ideas, 1st ed. (New York:
W. W. Norton, 2010).
10 Victor Papanek, Design for the Real World: Human Ecology
and Social Change, 2nd ed. (Chicago: Academy Chicago
Publishers, 2000), ix.
11 Felicity D. Scott, On Architecture Under Capitalism, Grey
Room, no. 6 (Winter 2002): 46.
12 Cross, Designerly Ways of Knowing.
 Hannah Rose Mendoza
in what failure looks like.13 Of primary
importance is recognition that what is called
for is not gentle modification but rather a
radical shift. Acts of civil disobediencethe
deliberate violation of rules as a means to
advance justicehave a power to reveal and
delegitimize an unjust system.14 The ability to
recognize claims are not valid simply because
they have been issued by authority is vital
to the continued pursuit of a just society. A
viable means to truly change the world is
to prepare a generation for sustained civil
disobedience.
Artists have, at least in ideals, rejected
the allure of the market. This deviance from
education as workforce development is chosen
in direct contradiction to the social directive
to participate in the cycle of consumption.
Artists and art students are not always freed
from the pandering required of business, but
they do emerge from a culture in which they
thresholds 40
are actively encouraged to practice disorder;
to rebel against the impositions of societal
goals. Each piece of work is potentially an act
of civil disobedience.
Design, on the other hand, has focused
on product novelty as a means to an end; a
planned obsolescence that ensures continued
consumption. Novelty for its own sake is
superficial; the process is seen as something
to be overcome.15 The rapid pace at which
style can change means that there must be
continual reaffirmation of social and self-
acceptance through consumption.16 This
commodity fetishism is magnified by a culture
13 Ken Robinson, Out of Our Minds: Learning to Be Creative
(West Sussex, UK: Capstone, 2001).
14 Albert Camus, The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt, 1st ed.
(New York: Vintage Books, 1991).
15 Eva Zeisel, Eva Zeisel On Design (Woodstock, NY: Overlook
Press, 2004).
16 Mona Domosh, American Commodities in an Age of Empire
(New York: Routledge, 2006).
17 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto, ed.
David McLellan (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).
18 As comedian Maria Bamford noted, Holding myself to an
impossible standard of beauty is the only thing that keeps me
from starting a riot.
19 Tony Fry, Against an Essential Theory of Need: Some
Considerations for Design Theory, Design Issues 8, no. 2
(Spring 1992): 41-53.
of competition that is a mechanism that supports
capitalisms basic requirement for a continually
expanding market.17 The time that we spend
remaining vigilant to changes in fashion that
require new purchases, keeps us too busy to
realize the need for structural change.18
In the West, we believe in the need
to own.19 This cult of ownership keeps our
attention focused on acquisition and directs
our concerns toward what is necessary in
order to acquire more. Leading a moral life
grants the individual nice things; poor
choices are responsible for destitution and
vagrancy. The reward for good behavior is not
passage to a heavenly kingdom after death,
but the things needed to make this current life
as good as possible. The measure of a humans
worth is marked on a scale of ownership.
An integrative approach in which justice
is not just an isolated topic that young
designers are sporadically asked to consider
is needed. It isnt that we must think about
different things or more things, but rather
that we must think differently. It is possible to
refuse to legitimate the structure of injustice
by declining to participate in the perpetuation
of social violence performed in the name of
market advancement. In acts of civil and social
disobedience lay the mechanisms to set aside
the existing rules and practices that calcify the
conflation of economic viability and standards
of human behavior. Allowing for the creation
of a new disorder is the first step in perceiving
a new pattern.
It is time to move beyond awareness and
assessment. We must begin to ask ourselves:
what am I not willing to do?
***
Hannah Rose Mendoza is Assistant Professor of Interior
Architecture at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
Her research interests include design for the disenfranchised
and the disassembly of imagined boundaries. Mendoza received
her BA in Art History from Rutgers University and an MFA in
Interior Design from Florida State University.
236
 Aid, Capital,
and the
Humanitarian
Trap

Joseph M. Watson

1 Design trends, while not parallel with social, economic,
Mary McLeod, Architecture and Politics
in the Reagan Era: From Postmodernism to
Deconstructivism, Assemblage 8 (1989): 25.
2
A representative sample from the
architecture field might include individuals
such as Shigeru Ban, who has been at the
forefront of many relief efforts with his paper
tube structures, Bryan Bell of Design Corps,
Emily Pilloton of Project H, and Cameron
Sinclair of Architecture for Humanity; not-
for-profit organizations Habitat for Humanity,
Make It Right, and MASS Design Group;
and academic programs like the Rural Studio
at Auburn University and the Vlock Building
Project at Yale University. Exhibitions include
the National Design Triennial: Why Design
Now? and Design for the Other 90%, both
at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design
Museum, and Small Scale, Big Change: New
Architectures of Social Engagement at the
Museum of Modern Art.
3 not-for-profit organizations, for-profit companies, and academic
Cameron Sinclair and Kate Stohr make use
of socially conscious design and social
design to variously describe their own
organization, Architecture for Humanity, and
the broader movement. See Architecture for
Humanity, Design Like You Give a Damn:
Architectural Responses to Humanitarian
Crises (New York: Metropolis Books,
thresholds 40
2006). Stohr even uses the curious phrase,
humanitarian, or social, design, (35) which
seems to incorrectly conflate the terms.
For Sinclair and Stohr, as for humanitarian
architects in general, humanitarian is
understood to modify crises, causes,
issues, and, occasionally, design but never
architecture per se. Strictly speaking,
however, humanitarian as an adjective
describes those concerned with or seeking
to promote human welfare (NOAD), so
the humanitarian crises alluded to in Design
Like You Give a Damns subtitle would imply
crises to which no one responded.
4
Alain Badiou, Ethics: An Essay on the
Understanding of Evil, trans. Peter Hallward
(London: Verso, 2001), 4ff.
Joseph M. Watson
or political trends, are certainly influenced by them and cannot
be adequately considered apart from them. Regarding the
relationship between architecture and its sociopolitical contexts
in the modern and postmodern eras, Mary McLeod observes
that just as architecture is intrinsically joined to political
and economic structures by virtue of its production, so, too,
its formits meaning as a cultural objectcarries political
resonances.1 It then seems inevitable that after a generation
during which society was (and continues to be) governed by
neoliberal economics and neoconservative politics, and the
design disciplines were dominated by corporate firms and
celebrity figures, the turn of the 21st century would witness the
emergence of a new trend. While the movement is relatively
young, its protagonists are numerous and include individuals,
programs for which every decision carries social, ecological,
and political weight. It has gained immense popularity in recent
years, becoming the subject of major museum exhibitions and
significantly altering both the general cultural landscape and
the language of the design professions.2
Settling on a name, at least for the architectural
manifestation of this movement, is however quite confusing.
Its proponents prefer socially engaged design, socially conscious
design, or even, simply, social design, but since design and
especially architecture are by necessity social, these are at
best redundant if not essentially meaningless. While the term
humanitarian design is frequently used within the design
community generally, the social- terms are typically preferred
by architects (both individuals and organizations) and are
often used interchangeably.3 The most appropriate term
might be humanitarian architecture, concerned as this
movement is with providing shelter for and improving the
material conditions of those affected by global crisesfrom
the victims of environmental catastrophes to the refugees
of political upheavals.
Despite its novelty and professed goals, humanitarian
architecturewhen viewed within its contemporary
socioeconomic contextmight be exaggerating its self-
proclaimed transformative potential. French philosopher
Alain Badiou views this resurgence in the West of concern
for the rights of man and fundamental liberties as the only
possible recourse for a society that can no longer imagine any
real alternative to neoliberal economics and must therefore
accept its Churchillian claim to be the least worst option.4
Humanitarian architecture must therefore be situated within
the political and economic structures from which it has
238
 Aid, Capital, and the Humanitarian Trap
arisen.5 In Badious rendering, the origin of these concerns can
be found within the collapse of really existing alternatives to
the dominant, global capitalist economy. Without competing
ideologies, the only remaining economic system, market
capitalism, simply absorbed the role played by the previously
antagonistic ideologies and a socially responsible capitalism
emerged in its place.
Slovenian theorist Slavoj iek follows a similar logic
but places the conflation roughly two decades earlier, when
capitalism successfully absorbed the legacy of 68.6 By ieks beyond questioning the design professions
account, the free market system admits to its past and present
exploitation and acknowledges its catastrophic tendencies,
[but] the claim is now made that one can discern the signs of a
new orientation which is aware that the capitalist mobilization
of a societys productive capacity can also be made to serve
ecological goals, the struggle against poverty, and other worthy
ends.7 By seeming to atone for its sins, capitalism aims to insert
its own internal critique through the market, attempting to use
market-based mechanisms to address market-caused ills rather
than allow for true economic emancipation.
We need not choose between Badiou and ieks
chronology to sense the magnitude of this shift. By claiming,
with the likes of Margaret Thatcher and Francis Fukuyama,
that there is no alternative and we are therefore living in the
end of history, it is seemingly impossible to level a systematic
critique against the only remaining and now universal politico-
economic ideology. This more inclusive capitalism that no
longer has an antagonistic relationship to social and ecological
responsibility can supposedly remedy the damage caused by its
prior incarnation. According to iek, The new ethos of global
responsibility is thus able to put capitalism to work as the
most efficient instrument of the common good.8 Rather than
an externalization or a burden, social responsibility and the
common good are now at the heart of global capitalism.
Larry Summerss infamous 1991 memo inadvertently
demonstrates this new ethos. Written while chief economist
and vice president for Development Economics at the World
Bank, Summerss memo argues that the economic logic behind
dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is
impeccable and we should face up to that.9 Though the World
Bank disavowed the memo and Summers has insisted that
the language is sardonic and meant to provoke discussion on
the policies behind liberalization, the economic logic does, in
fact, remain impeccably sound.10 Summers goes on to explain
that under-populated countries in Africa are vastly UNDER-
polluted and, most importantly, that the consequences of
dumping would only be felt in the long term.11 The population
239
5
A July 2010 blog post by Bruce Nussbaum
sparked an online debate that might
have achieved this end, but Nussbaums
intentionally provocative titleIs
Humanitarian Design the New Imperialism?
Does Our Desire to Help Do More Harm
Than Good?put humanitarian designers
on the defensive. While Nussbaums
original post and some of the responses
attempt to deal with the social and political
complexities of humanitarianism, a few
simply exchange intelligent dialogue for
finger pointing, and none of the pieces move
role in providing aid to the poor and the
dispossessed within existing political and
economic structures. See Humanitarian
Design vs. Design Imperialism: Debate
Summary, Change Observer, accessed
November 30, 2011, http://changeobserver.
designobserver.com/feature/humanitarian-
design-vs-design-imperialism-debate-
summary/14498/.
6
See Slavoj iek, First as Tragedy, Then as
Farce (London: Verso, 2009).
7
Ibid., 34.
8
Ibid., 35.
9
Lawrence H. Summers, quoted in Ivan
Petrella, Beyond Liberation Theology: A
socio
Polemic (London: SCM Press, 2008), 16.
10
For a systematic defense of Summerss
economic logic, see Jay Johnson, Gary
Pecquet, and Leon Taylor, Potential Gains
from Trade in Dirty Industries: Revisiting
Lawrence Summers Memo, Cato Journal
27 (Fall 2007): 398-401.
11
Summers, Beyond Liberation Theology, 17.
Habitat for Humanitys 2007 Jimmy Carter
Work Project in South Los Angeles (detail).
Altered by author, original photograph by
Lyndsey Payzant Wells.
 Joseph M. Watson
thresholds 40

Haitis National Palace in Port au Prince after the 2010 earthquake (detail).
Altered by author, original photograph by Pamela Gordon.

Trahan Architectss prototype house for Brad Pitts Make It Right Foundation in the Lower
Ninth Ward of New Orleans. Altered by author, original photograph by Michael Cobb.

240
 Aid, Capital, and the Humanitarian Trap

of developing countries can accept toxic waste from the 12

See Jeffrey Inaba and Katharine Meagher,
developed world, accrue the economic benefits, and never World of Giving (Baden: Lars Mller, 2010).
live long enough for detrimental side effects such as cancer 13
Ibid., 152.
to settle in. 14
Under the logic of traditional capitalism, the value of Ibid., 167. One could make the much more
defensible argument that Habitats model
human life is commodified based on ones ability to contribute provides housing for an often overlooked
to the global economyeither through production or demographic of low wage earners that
would not otherwise be able to obtain
consumption. The poor, unable to contribute and, therefore, affordable housing, instead of simply
economically worthless, are sacrificed as nonpersons to ensure focusing on the most visible demographic,
but neither Habitat nor Inaba do.
the smooth functioning of the market. Yet Summerss logic,
representative of capitalisms new social ethos, is far subtler: he
finds economic incentive for the market to rehabilitate these
nonpersons. Instead of being abandoned as refuse, superfluous
to the markets functioning, they are reincorporated. It is clear,
however, that the markets new ethos has more to do with
improving the lowest-wage countries way of thinking rather
than their way of life (i.e., ideological rather than material
inclusivity). Since the lowest-wage countries must remain
poor in order to remain relevant to the market, their living
conditions cannot be significantly improved.
Addressing the effects of economic scarcity through
the logic of the market is codified for the design world in
Jeffrey Inabas World of Giving, which develops a theory of

socio
philanthropic giving and humanitarian design.12 Extrapolating
from French sociologist Pierre Bourdieus symbolic capital,
Inabas concept of aid capital represents all of the various ways
of giving, their component parts, and the relationships between
givers, mediators, and receivers of aid. Aid, which might
consist of accumulated individual donations, food, building
materials, foreign government aid, or expert knowledge, travels
between individual volunteers, philanthropists, not-for-profit
organizations, non-governmental organizations, and sovereign
governments, before ultimately reaching its intended recipients.
Antagonistic to the greed inherent in economic capital, aid
capital functions as a check; it reorients economic capitals
exploitative tendency, encouraging it to abandon the exclusive
economies of scarcity and enter an intentional, participatory
and affirming economy of plenitude.13
Inabas description of Habitat for Humanity reveals the
ideology at work behind the supposedly benevolent aid capital.
By providing housing based not on need but the ability to
demonstrate potential stewardship through financial obligation
and sweat equity, Habitats model divides the poor into those
that are or are not useful to the market economy. Inaba defends
this by allowing that Habitat will never eradicate substandard
housing, and thus ... its prioritization must be organizational
longevity.14 Habitats aid capital is accrued through its

241
 Joseph M. Watson

15 reputation as a successful organization and mortgage-

Ibid., 33.
16 paying homeowners supply a steady source of additional
iek, First as Tragedy, Then as Farce, 35. reputation-building capital. Of equal importance is assuring
17
Inaba, World of Giving, 153. volunteers that they will not waste their time constructing
a house on which the owners might default. The logic is
strikingly parallel to the Summers memo: while attempting
to incorporate the poor, it is justifiable to sacrifice some for
the sake of others whose relevance is determined by their
ability to assimilate into and contribute to the market. Even
with the new humanitarian ethos, the market still determines
worth and will continue to exclude those that cannot actively
contribute. Since the needs of the organization and its
volunteers warm glow that results from acting generously15
trump the concerns of the people actually in need of housing,
the resignation that they will never eradicate substandard
housing is thus Habitats own self-fulfilling prophecy.
Inaba and the described humanitarian movement rely
on a false dichotomy between greedy economic capital and
benevolent aid capital. This is highly problematic because
it presupposes that one can correct for greed inherent
in the system through an internal check. So long as the
thresholds 40

humanitarian movement relies on the logic of market

capitalism, it will never play a truly antagonistic role. iek
explains that the basic ideological dispositif of capitalism
... is separated from its concrete socio-economic conditions
(capitalist relations of production) and conceived of as
an autonomous life ... leaving those very capitalist relations
intact.16 In other words, the language but not the logic of
the humanitarian movement is separated from contemporary
neoliberal ideology, and the disproportionate relationships
that allow those who control the flow of capital to define
the type of world within which the rest of us must live are
never questioned. The possibility for the humanitarians to
make a substantial critique of the situation that necessitates
their existence is reduced, and aid capitals economic
function suddenly seems less antagonistic: In order for Aid
Capital to flow back to the giver and accrue to the receiver,
some element of the donors original intent needs to remain
intact throughout the transformative procedure. As well, the
particular aspects of the recipients need must help shape
a donors original intent.17 While the recipients need is
considered, the donors concerns are privileged and, for the
most part, the recipients are conspicuously absent throughout
the consideration of aid capitals movement between the
two parties. Inabas aid capital is less a negation of economic
capitals exploitation than it is a transposition of this
disposition into humanitarian terms.

242
 Aid, Capital, and the Humanitarian Trap

Again, the market determines worthand increasingly 18

finds more creative ways to do so. For Badiou, the ecological
movement provides a precedent for the humanitarian
movement by demonstrating how, rather than being
antagonistic to the market, these movements simply provide
capital with new fields of investment, new inflections and new
deployments. ... So long as it can be transformed or aligned
in terms of market value, everythings fine.18 This is why
Cameron Sinclair, founder of Architecture for Humanity and
one of humanitarian architectures most visible protagonists,
is not disrupting a system as he claims,19 but closing the
loop on the same economic logic that created the situation
to which his organization responds; why, as with Summers,
the poor are seen no longer as a burden but as a resource;20
why natural and economic disasters provide an expanding
customer base and opportunities to expand into new markets;
and why Architecture for Humanitys current efforts in Haiti,
funded by the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund, are essentially just
cleaning up the damage compounded by the two presidents
foreign policy. With no economic alternative to turn to,
humanitarian architecture can at best reinforce the status quo.
More problematically, it provides a sheen for the very system
that created the inequality, with no need to admit culpability.
Badiou, Ethics, 106.
19
Cameron Sinclair, in Iconoclasts, season
4, episode 3, dir. Joe Berlinger and Bruce
Sinofsky (New York: Sundance Channel,
2008). Sinclairs full quote states, We
havent really talked about this, but some of
our architects, including myself, has [sic] had
death threats for what we do because were
disrupting a system. We just sent a bunch of
people to Sierra Leone and Liberia. This aint
pretty, but its the right thing to do.
20
Architecture for Humanity, Design Like You
Give a Damn, 44.
21
A thousand points of light was a
recurring allusion for George H. W. Bush
during his presidency that emphasized the
importance of individual stewardship in
the face of diminishing government funds.
See Inaugural Address, George Bush
Presidential Library and Museum, accessed
November 30, 2011, http://bushlibrary.
tamu.edu/research/public_papers.
php?id=1&year=1989&month=01.
22
Slavoj iek, Living in the End Times
(London: Verso, 2010), 4.
23
Ibid., xv.
24
Inaba, World of Giving, 151.

socio
Like a thousand points of light,21 it allows for the continued
denial of responsibility by those with the ability to end the
exploitation of the majority of the worlds population.
According to iek, this fits perfectly with the hidden
ideology behind todays post-ideological society. Instead of
asking what created the crisis with which we are confronted,
the underlying ideological message is something like: Dont
think, dont politicize, forget about the true causes of their
poverty, just act, contribute money, so that you will not have
to think!22 The urgency with which we need to respond
removes the situation from its economic and political context,
precluding uncomfortable questions about how our own
lifestyle might be complicit in the structural injustice that leads
to these types of crises. Moreover, it reduces the act of response
to consumer choicewe can simply text a five-dollar donation
without ever setting down our cell phones. In essence, it avoids
imagining anything truly creative, settling instead for a liberal
ideology of victimhood, ... renouncing all positive projects and
pursuing the least bad option.23
Returning to aid capital, Inaba explains that it works
against the system of imbalance that necessitates its existence. ...
It looks to short circuit the feedback loop that focuses capital
into ever-tighter circles.24 The problem is that it does not
and cannot. In Badious language, the only thing that would

243

25
The precise formal definitions of situation,
event, fidelity, and truth can be found in
Alain Badiou, Being and Event, trans. Oliver
Feltham (London: Continuum, 2005). For a
more concise and accessible explanation,
see Badiou, Ethics, 40-57.
26
Reinhold Niebuhr, Beyond Tragedy: Essays
on the Christian Interpretation of History
(New York: C. Scribners Sons, 1965), 207.
thresholds 40
***
Joseph M. Watson is a Master of Arts
candidate in Social Ethics at Union
Theological Seminary in the City of the
New York. He received a BArch from the
University of Tennessee Knoxville and
has practiced architecture in Manhattan.
Joseph M. Watson
effectively short-circuit the capitalist feedback loop would be
an event, or the sudden irruption of a previously inconceivable
logic that carries the potential to transform the dominant
forms of knowledge in a given situation. Fidelity to the event
marks the decision to think the situation in terms of the truth
introduced by the event, which initiates a process by which
new forms of thought are improvised and investigated.25
The logic to which Inaba and the humanitarian
designers subscribe only re-presents that of the market-
capitalist situation. The donor maintains control and it is
his, her, or the organizations intent that must be respected
throughout, ensuring that the asymmetrical capitalist relation
(capital : labor :: donor : recipient) remains firmly in place.
Inabas world of giving presumes that the structures of injustice
that necessitate the gift would remain intact; nothing about the
system of imbalance is actually negated. Yet over seventy years
ago, the preeminent social ethicist Reinhold Niebuhr rebuked
anyone who takes established injustice for granted but seeks
to deodorize it with incidental philanthropies and with deeds
of kindness, which are meant to display power as much as to
express pity.26 Occasional efforts do little without systematic
overhaul; even more dangerous is the notion that the same
logic that produced the injustice can be used to find a solution.
Today, Niebuhrs incidental philanthropies have been replaced
by a world of giving in which greed and giving are no longer
distinguishable and in which the disparity between rich and
poor has never been greater. With economic and ecological
uncertainty looming, an architecture that does not rely on the
logic of social injustice is an absolute necessity.
244
The End
of
Civiliza-
tion
Daniel Daou
 Daniel Daou
The End(s)
I want to address the end of civilization.
Here I use end in both of its acceptations:
end as limit and end as purpose. By
civilization, I mean the result of the sum
total of human activities on the planet in both
its tangible (e.g., cities) and intangible (e.g.,
information) dimensions. Effectively then, I
have two questions: Is there a limit to human
existence, and is there a purpose to it?
My intention is not ontological, but
epistemological. In other words, I will not
attempt to provide an answer to such lofty
questions. Rather, my purpose will be to
offer a brief overview of the eclectic range of
pertinent literature, to draw useful insights
from it, and to use these insights toward a
critique on sustainability.
Why sustainability? Philologically,
sustainability can be traced back to the
thresholds 40
German nachhaltigkeit, a term that implied
a certain limitless quality to the processes
it was applied to.1 It is this never ending or
perpetual dimension of the word what links it
to the question about the end.
The End as Limit
The first person in record to
systematically estimate the limit of the
planets human carrying capacity was the
Dutch scientist Antoine van Leeuwenhoek
in 1679.2 By extrapolating the population
density of the Netherlands to the rest of the
estimated habitable surface of the Earth,
he set the maximum world population at
13.4 billion. Leeuwenhoek assumed that a
mere extrapolation was enough to obtain
an accurate answer. Today this assumption
has been acknowledged as problematic and
referred to as The Netherlands Fallacy.3
Leewenhoeks exercise inaugurated
a long tradition within demographics from
where perhaps the most influential work
was produced by the English scholar Robert
Thomas Malthus. Malthus theorized that rising
numbers of humans would unavoidably trigger
food shortagesa process that would lead
to collapse.4 This scenario has come to be
referred to as the Malthusian catastrophe.5
But like in Leeuwenhoeks estimate, a fallacy
can be teased out in Malthuss. He assumed
that his insights on animal populations could
be applied to humans as well. This is a form
of appealing to nature, a logical fallacy that
assumes that correctness follows only from
nature.6 The nineteenth-century economist
Henry George summed this flaw best in a
candid quote: Both the jayhawk and the
man eat chickens, but the more jayhawks,
the fewer chickens, while the more men, the
more chickens.7 Faulty assumptions aside,
Malthuss case is useful because it illustrates
epistemic conservatismthe conception
that there are unmovable, universal limits
set by nature. A contrasting position, one
where human development potential is not
constrained by nature, has been described by
sociologist Ted Benton as emancipatory.8
These two positions are in fact commonly
referred to as Malthusian (such was the
influence Malthus) and cornucopian.9
1 Nathan Thanki, Sustainable: A Philological
Investigation, HumJournal (Bar Harbor, ME: College of
the Atlantic, 2011).
2 Joel E. Cohen, How Many People Can the Earth Support?
(New York: Norton, 1995).
3 Paul R. Ehrlich and Anne H. Ehrlich, The Population
Explosion (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990).
4 Thomas R. Malthus and James Bonar, First Essay on
Population, 1798 (New York: A.M. Kelley, 1965).
5 Gregory Clark, A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic
History of the World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 2007).
6 Mohan Rao, Abiding Appeal of Neo-Malthusianism:
Explaining the Inexplicable, Economic and Political
Weekly 39, no. 32 (August 7, 2004): 3599-3604.
7 Henry George, Progress and Poverty, An Inquiry into the
Cause of Industrial Depressions and of Increase of Want
with Increase of Wealth; The Remedy (New York: The
Modern Library, 1938).
8 Ted Benton, Marxism and Natural Limits: An Ecological
Critique and Reconstruction, New Left Review 178, no. 1
(November-December 1989): 51-86.
9 John Tierney, Betting on the Planet New York Times,
December 2, 1990.
246
 The End of Civilization
If Malthusians agree on unmovable
natural limits, cornucopians share the belief
that science and technological progress
can always figure out a way to overcome
these limits.10 The modern schism between
Malthusian scarcity and cornucopian
abundance can be traced back at least to
Marx and Engels who attempted to disprove
Malthus by reformulating his law.11 For
them, a rising human population would not
translate into a food resource problem but a
sure boon for the scientific advancement that
would increase food production, for what is
impossible to science?12
But why have thinkerseconomists in
particularfound a need to argue in favor of
growth in the first place? It would seem as if
existence without growth was anathema.
This returns us to our original questions, to
the second question of purpose. The limits
to existence cannot be explored without
questioning its purpose as well.
The End as Purpose
There have been at least three proposed
answers to the question of our purpose, of
why we grow.
The first is determined by biological and
environmental factors: Life expands on earth
as molecules do in empty space checked only
by environmental pressures; energy inputs in
a system will increase the systems internal
order while excreting degraded matter and
energy. Growth is, in other words, the intrinsic
signature of life.13
The second reason is dictated by a social
imperative: The right of humans to develop to
their fullest potential through ever increasing
health, education, affluence, and overall well-
being. This is the precisely the emancipatory
project described by Benton which is at odds
with the epistemic conservatism of Malthus.14
The third reason is driven by technology:
This line of reasoning sees in technology the
main force behind development throughout
history.15 A variation of technological
determinism introduces the concept of
existential risk.16 Existential risk is defined as
anything that threatens to drive civilization
to extinctiona state which is, by principle,
irreversible.17 Since existential risk is a form of
a black swan and therefore unpredictable,
the only way to ensure humanity will be
able to cope with it is by an ever increasing
problem solving capacity driven by
technological progress.18
However, the actual crux of the debate
is not whether the limits of our existence are
determined by natural, social, or technological
factors. If we reconsider the two groups
described by Tierney (the boomsters and
the doomsters as he called them), putting
aside the traits that define them, we can
see that both have in common the same
goal: guaranteeing a prosperous future for
humanity. What, then, is the root of their
diametrically opposed views?
socio
10 Julian Lincoln Simon, The Ultimate Resource (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1981); S. Charles Maurice and
Charles W. Smithson, Are We Running Out of Everything?
Series on Public Issues No. 1 (College Station, TX: Center
for Free Enterprise, Texas A&M University, 1983).
11 K. J. Walker, Ecological Limits and Marxian Thought,
Politics 14, no. 1 (1979): 29-46; Benton, Marxism and
Natural Limits.
12 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Collected Works (New
York: International Publishers, 1987), 3:444.
13 Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadski and Mark A. McMenamin,
The Biosphere (New York: Copernicus, 1998); Ilya Prigogine
and Isabelle Stengers, Order Out of Chaos: Mans New
Dialogue with Nature (Toronto: Bantam Books, 1984);
James Lovelock, Gaia, A New Look at Life on Earth (Oxford,
UK: Oxford University Press, 1979).
14 Benton, Marxism and Natural Limits.
15 Merritt Roe Smith and Leo Marx Does Technology Drive
History? The Dilemma of Technological Determinism
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994).
16 Nick Bostrom, The Future of Humanity, in New Waves in
Philosophy of Technology, ed. Jan-Kyrre Berg Olsen, Evan
Selinger, and Soren Riis (New York: Palgrave McMillan, 2009).
17 Nick Bostrom and Milan M. Cirkovic, Global Catastrophic
Risks (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2008).
18 Nassim Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly
Improbable (New York: Random House, 2007).
247
 Daniel Daou
thresholds 40

248
 The End of Civilization

socio

Flowchart representation of the world system model used by Meadows et al., from the 1972 edition of The Limits to Growth.
Courtesy of Universe Books and The Club of Rome.

249
 Daniel Daou
thresholds 40

The base case scenario of the world system model as depicted in first edition of The Limits to Growth (1972).
Courtesy of Universe Books and The Club of Rome.

250
 The End of Civilization

socio

The double resources scenario of the world system model as depicted in first edition of The Limits to Growth (1972).
Courtesy of Universe Books and The Club of Rome.

251
 Daniel Daou
thresholds 40

The Club of Rome meeting in Salzburg in 1972, the year The Limits to Growth is released. Courtesy of Algemeen Nederlands Persbureau.

Decoupling Even if conventional distinctions and

Too easily we fall within stereotypes when
we associate doomsters with the environmental
movement and boomsters with economics,
or when we characterize the doomster as a
Luddite and the boomster as a techno-utopian.
Such divisions are not without exceptions,
suggesting that the underlying differences are
elsewhere. For example, not all boomsters
have an uncritical faith in technologyindeed,
some see technological progress itself as a
form of existential risk. And not all economists
are boomsters either; increasingly within
the field, efforts are being made to develop
viable models for a zero-growth steady-state
economy.19 Complicating the issue further,
there are environmentalists who make a strong
case for technological progress.20
stereotypes fail, there are still two sides to the
debate. The crucial concept that differentiates
all the positions within the discussion is
decoupling.21 Here, decoupling refers to
the separation of growth from prosperity.22
Couplers argue for growth because either
they do not distinguish between growth and
development or because they see the former
as a precondition for the latter. Decouplers,
on the other hand, argue against growth
because either they find it unnecessary or at
odds with long term prosperity. Both couplers
and decouplers however are ultimately more
interested in prosperity and less in growth.
Untangling these oft-linked notions allows one
to see the debate with more clarity. The real
question we have at our hands is whether we
can enjoy prosperity without growth forever.

252
 The End of Civilization
I add emphasis to the last word as a reminder
that ultimately this is an issue of perpetual
sustainabilitya pleonasm since no form of
sustainability is sustainable if it cannot be
carried on indefinitely.
Sustainability
S ustainable development is
development that meets the
needs of the present without
compromising the ability of
future generations to meet their
own needs.
The Brundtland Commission 22
The Brundtland Commissions definition
of sustainable development as stated in Our
Common Future is vague enough as to allow
interpretations coming from both coupler
and decoupler camps. As such, it does little
to clear up the relationship between growth
and prosperity. However, I argue that the
mainstream interpretation of the Commissions
report has been with a decoupler slant.
A decoupler argument is characterized by
its imposition of maximum acceptable limits.
For example, proposals such as polluting
less (e.g., by flying less or consuming less),
19 Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, The Entropy Law and the
Economic Process (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1971); Herman E. Daly, Beyond Growth: The
Economics of Sustainable Development (Boston: Beacon
Press, 1996).
20 Stewart Brand, Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist
Manifesto (New York: Viking, 2009).
21 Daly, Beyond Growth; Tim Jackson, Prosperity Without
Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet (London: Earthscan
2009); Richard Heinberg, The End of Growth: Adapting
to Our New Economic Reality (Gabriola, BC: New Society
Publishers, 2011).
22 Wolfgang Sachs, Sustainable Development, in The
International Handbook of Environmental Sociology, ed.
Michael Redclift (Cheltenham, UK: Elgar, 1997).
23 Gro Harlem Bruntland et al., Our Common Future
(Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1990).
24 Kevin Kelly, What Technology Wants (New York:
Viking, 2010).
25 Lance H. Gunderson and C. S. Holling, Panarchy:
Understanding Transformations in Human and Natural
Systems (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2002).
curbing population growth, or eating locally
grown organic food still seem intuitively like a
good thing to do. This is because they assume
that progress does not depend on growth to
provide prosperity; in other words, they can
be decoupled.
But there is a counterpart to the
decoupler interpretation of sustainability.
A less intuitive coupler spin of sustainable
development would see, for example, growing
levels of energy consumption as necessary
for the kind of technological progress that
could allow us to push existential risk
indefinitely into the future. In other words,
the consumption of natural resources could
be understood as a metabolic process that
produces waste but also, more importantly,
increased order in the form of more complex
technologies that translate into a better
capacity of humanity as a whole system to
respond to risk.24
A good analogy of coupler and decoupler
hermeneutic modes can be found in the
socio
distinction between ecological resilience
and adaptability.25 Resilience is the capacity
of a system to recover from disturbance
(existential risk being the most extreme
kind). Therefore, resilience is related to
the concept of stability. Adaptability is the
systems capacity to change as a response
to disturbance. In this sense, it is as
important as resilience. Many environmental
management problems arise from the partial
understanding of the interplay between
adaptability and resilience. For example,
in the name of preservation, controlled
fires were discarded from the repertoire
of forestry management which led to a
rise in dangerous wildfires from the great
accumulations of biomass that needed
purging. This illustrates how, paradoxically,
change (i.e., energy transformation) is
important in preservation. For their emphasis
on correlating sustainability with achieving a
steady state, decouplers could be associated
with resilience. Similarly, for their arguments
in favor of constant change, couplers
253
 Daniel Daou

ideas are more related to adaptability. To disperse so lavishly the cream

The reference to the resilience and of our mineral wealth is to be
adaptability as defined within ecology shows spendthrifts of our capital
how important seemingly mutually exclusive to part with that which will
approaches are toward preservation. never come back. This might
The polemic between couplers and lead to the sudden collapse
decouplers is still a matter of debate. Until it of civilization. Yet much of
is settled, the less obvious or even counter- civilization, such as our rich
intuitive interpretations of sustainability literature and philosophy,
coming from the coupler side of the debate
might never have existed
should not be dismissed for the more readily
without the lavish expenditure
accepted decoupler ones. It could be that
of our material energy that
growth, as a net increase in energy and
redeemed us from dullness and
materials processed, is inseparable from
degradation a century ago. To
prosperity or even intrinsically unavoidable
reduce consumption might only
but, moreover, the ultimate implication of a
bring back stagnation. We have
coupler interpretation of sustainability is that
to make the momentous choice
both steady-state or de-growth scenarios
put in jeopardy our capacity to cope with between brief greatness and
unexpected risk. Until it is settled we should longer continued mediocrity. 26
not dismiss the less obvious or even counter-
thresholds 40

intuitive definitions of sustainability. Even the
nineteenth-century economist William Stanley
Jevons, one of Malthuss most eloquent
successors, displayed some caution towards
conservatism:
Today, it is less clear whether our choices are
limited to those pointed by Jevons. But the
coin is still nevertheless in the air.

26 William Stanley Jevons and Alfred William Flux, The Coal

Question; An Inquiry Concerning the Progress of the
Nation, And the Probable Exhaustion of Our Coal-mines
(New York: A. M. Kelley, 1965).

***
Daniel Daou (BArch 05, MArch II 06) obtained a Master in
City Planning and a Master in Science of Architecture Studies
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2011 thanks
to the support of Mexicos National Council for Science and
Technology, the National Fund for Culture and Arts, and the
Brockmann Foundation. He is currently a Doctor of Design
student at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Under
the title of Synthetic Ecology, his research aims to explore
the convergence of ecological, economical and technological
paradigms in the built environment.

254
Toward
a Lake
Ontario
City
Brendan Cormier and Christopher Pandolfi of
Department of Unusual Certainties
 Department of Unusual Certainties

Prologue

Shortly after the enviro-economic meltdown of 2012, an

emergency meeting was held at an undisclosed location somewhere at
the bottom of Lake Ontario. The meetingaffectionately dubbed by
the press years later as lacus mos servo or the lake will servewas
attended by government officials from both Canada and the United
States, business leaders, the intellectual elite, various unions, and a
random selection of regular people. The decisions that came out of
thresholds 40

the meeting were described as fantastical by some and desperate by

others. There were also the usual empty but threatening references
to Hitler and Communism. But, a narrow majority of the assembly
agreed that transformation was inevitable and that a certain regional
view, centered on the shared resource of the lake, was the best
approach.
Shortly after the meeting, a plan was released entitled Lake
Ontario City: A New Tomorrow. The plan outlined how the
lake would once again become the center of all natural systems,
infrastructures, economies, leisure, and relationshipsthe lake would
become life. Accompanying the plan was a series of vignettes which
illustrated the major transformations that would occur within the
region. Although vague in nature, these vignettes were seen as a
necessary provocation for the full-scale implementation of the plan.
Lake Ontario City was the future, it was unrelenting and unforgiving,
and most importantly, it became real.

256
 Toward a Lake Ontario City
A Tale of Two Territories
The Plan contains one major organizing
principle: the division of the lake region into
two zones, East and West, that together encom-
pass the entire territory surrounding the lake Fig. 1.
The West Zone stretches from the
Darlington Nuclear Generating Station in
Clarington, counter-clockwise to Rochester.
The zone is designated for the clustered
growth of high-density settlements. In this
sense, it is a continuation and extension of the
urbanization process that has dominated the
region for the last century, commonly referred
to as the Golden Horseshoe. A high-speed
rail loop connects the entire zone, traversing
Lake Ontario from Rochester to Clarington,
creating a North American Randstad. Whereas
in Holland the empty center of the Randstad
is a protected agricultural core dubbed the
Green Heart, Lake Ontario Citys center is
dubbed the Blue Heart.
The East Zone runs clockwise from
Clarington to Rochester around the eastern
half of the lake. The Zone is designated
for low-density settlements, artisanal and
agricultural production, and eco-leisure
tourism. Development in this region is
strictly monitored. Not only is density kept
at a minimum but draconian environmental
regulations restrict affordability in the region
to the extremely wealthy and the die-hard
environmentalist elite.
The Great Energy Reef
In the center of the lake lies the Great
Energy Reefa combination of energy produc
-tion, aqua-culture, and water basin research
units, housed in a loose assemblage of semi-
autonomous floating barges which reconfigure
to meet the challenges of the day Fig. 2 . The
lake once contained a wealth of fish species
which supported several fisheries around the
lake and the investment in fish farming is an
attempt to revive this local fishing economy.
257
The Lake Ontario
Water Ecology
Research Lab (the L.O.W.E.R. Lab)
has its headquarters on the Great Energy
Reef, with several roving labs which set off to
different corners of the lake, collecting samples
and monitoring lake ecologies. The heart of the
L.O.W.E.R. Lab sits beneath the Great Energy
Reef on the lakes floor where it can monitor
deep-water ecologies as well as the intake
mechanisms of several deep-water cooling
systems. These have been installed to cool
the central business districts of Lake Ontario
Citys main hubs. An educational branch is
also located here, where classroom fieldtrips
give students a unique view of the Lake and its
significance to the region.
As a result of the Great Energy Reef
policy, Hamilton has become the leading
center for wind turbine manufacturing and
wind energy research. Its aging steel mills and
army of unemployed and underemployed
socio
steel workers made it the perfect city for
launching this now-burgeoning economy. The
local university, McMaster, has also taken a
leading role in refining the technology for
future citizens of Lake Ontario City. Likewise,
Rochester, another struggling rustbelt town,
has become a primary manufacturer and
developer of solar panel technology with the
Rochester Institute of Technology engaging in
solar energy research.
The Voluntary Prisoners of
Prince Edward County
A county once known for its boomer-
friendly gastro-tours, Prince Edward has
transformed itself into a hybrid workers
colony-leisure zone. Under the Plan for Lake
Ontario City, every citizen is obliged to
spend a year-long retreat, working the land.
Prince Edward County, with its picturesque
setting and its exalted artisanal products, has
become the favorite destination for voluntary
 Department of Unusual Certainties

Cornwall

Massena

Brockville

ontario east zone

Thousand
Peterborough Islands
Bay of Kingston
Quinte
Adirondack
Mountains

Port Hope Voluntary Prisoners of

Harbour
Prince Edward County
thresholds 40

Oshawa
es
da

ta t

Watertown
na

Lake ontario
dS

s
Ca

ta in
Toronto
ite

Great Energy Reef

H ig
Un

un

hS
pe
Mo

ed
Mississauga Ra
ty

il L
o
is

op
eM

Oakville
Oswego
Th

David
Mills
Hamilton
HamiltonHarbour Eighteen Mile
Niagara Creek Rochester
St. Catharines River

Niagara Syracuse
Falls

West zone
na
da
te s
New York
Ca S ta
Ithaca
it ed
Un

Pennsylvania

FIG. 1

258
 Toward a Lake Ontario City

GREAT ENERGY REEF

OVERVIEW PLAN

Fry habitat

Adult fish ready to be

processed Spawning and
auxillary uses
for aquacul-
ture and Great
Energy Reef

socio

Detachable Main wind Aquaculture Solar panel

battery from turbine barge barge
barge

Detachable battery
submarines

Elevator to
Anchors to surface
stabailize
barge
Fish waste
transformed into
fertilizer

Underwater Reserach Centre

FIG. 2

259
 Department of Unusual Certainties

imprisonment Fig. 3 . There is a lengthy waiting people interested in cross-country skiing, it

list of volunteers, and other regions around the
lake have now equipped themselves for this
same program. Citizens can choose at what
point in their life they want to spend the year
or can choose to break up the year into several
shorter stays. Thus the program is considered,
to a certain degree, voluntary. Many citizens
come back from the experience so invigorated
from working directly with the earth that they
choose to engage in the program multiple times.
The Voluntary Prisoners program allows
organic and local production of food to
flourish in the region because of the constant
supply of cheap labor. This in-kind subsidy
allows the region to compete against the larger
industrial food producers that have dominated
the global food economy. Volunteers are given
free meals and lodging and, beyond that, are
expected to live out an ascetic year absent of
most of their possessions. In return, they gain a
thresholds 40
seemed unlikely that it would ever take off.
Seeing Torontos garbage conundrum, he
suggested that Oswego begin a landfill project
that would take the garbage from all of the
cities around Lake Ontario to make their own
mountains. Garbage is loaded onto specially
manufactured trash barges from all points of
Lake Ontario and shipped to Oswegos port.
The project has just begun but already its
first phase has managed to form a handful of
bunny slopes and a cross-country trail. The
new formation is called the Misty Mountains
for the fog that rolls off the hills in the
summer time Fig. 4 .
Beyond building a tourism economy
and beyond the revenues from receiving the
garbage, another spin-off economy has begun.
Avid eco-designers have moved to Oswego
and started up a series of studios to adaptively
reuse the refuse. Furniture designers, industrial

valuable education in natural ecology, artisanal designers, and fashion designers are using
practices, and sustainable livingsome of Lake Ontario Citys trash to make innovative
which can be put to use back home and new products.
some of which is useful only to fill countless
hours of cocktail conversation. Several eco-
leisure programs are also included to make the
volunteers stay more lucrative, including bog
diving, horse riding in the sand banks, and
grape stomping festivals.

The Misty Mountains

of Oswego and South Shore
Trash Couture

As the result of a political impasse,

Toronto had been without a local landfill for
several years, forcing it to haul its garbage
over 500 kilometers to a landfill in Michigan.
With the Plan, a new land-forming project
started across the lake near Oswego, one of
the snowiest places in North America. The
mayor of Oswego, an avid skier, wanted to
promote a ski tourism industry. However,
without a significantly hilly terrain and enough

260
Toward a Lake Ontario City

socio
FIG. 3

FIG. 4

261
 Department of Unusual Certainties

Epilogue

The Two Zones, The Great Energy Reef, the High-

Speed Rail Loop, the Voluntary Prisoners program, and the Misty
Mountains were the first vignettes proposed in the Lake Ontario
City: A New Tomorrow document. It was remarkable how quickly
these proposals gained universal acceptance and were implemented.
Creating a dialogue based around a common resource had a way
of creating clarity and unity. Creating synergistic trade-offs became
an aggressive policy direction and an institutethe Department of
Synergistic Efficiencies (DOSE)was given the sole task of pursuing
efficient, mutually supportive trading of goods, resources, and skills
between cities and citizens.
Lake Ontario City has become so successful in coordinating
regional goals that is has been used as a model for other Great Lakes
cities. Lake Erie City was established next as an agreement primarily
thresholds 40

between Toledo, Cleveland, Buffalo, London, and Detroit. Lake

Michigan City followed as an all-American pact between Chicago,
Milwaukee, Grand Rapids, and Green Bay. Lake Superior and Lake
Huron struck up agreements, respectively called Lake Superior
Country and Lake Huron Country, focusing on rural synergies and
safe, and renewable exploitation of resources. Eventually, a union of
the five great lake cities was establishedand it was good. Lacus mos
servo. The lake will serve.

***
Brendan Cormier is an urban designer who has been published
in Canadian Architect, Spacing Magazine, and On Site Review.

Christopher Pandolfi is a cartographer, urban designer,

and visual journalist who also writes and teaches on these
practices.

Together, they founded the Department of Unusual Certainties

in 2010. DoUC is a Toronto-based research and design
collective informed by one guiding philosophythat the city
is a physical manifestation of a long sequence of unusual
certainties, each one more unusual and yet more certain than
its predecessor. DoUC is also the Innovator in Residence at the
Design Exchange, Canadas national design museum.

262
Socio -
paths
Jimenez Lai
 Jimenez Lai
thresholds 40

264
 Sociopaths

This case should

be open and shut.

The Great Villa of the He was killed in the fire,

billionaire was burnt to unconscious at the time of his
the ground last night. death. Blunt head trauma.

socio
The Butler The wife The Classmate

Three witnesses, But Ive never heard

all suspects. such discrepant
testimonials...

265
 Jimenez Lai

The Butlers
Story

My late Master
invited his old He loved I spent the entire Cleaning,
schoolmate to hosting lavish day to prepare. cooking.
the house. suppers.
thresholds 40

Like he did many a time

before, he loudly shouted
from another room distant
in the mansion.

Hey lazy!

Hurry up, lazy!

266
 Sociopaths

How hard I worked

Lazy? all my life.

Maybe this was the

straw that broke
the camels back.

I could not endure I set down my knife,

socio
his verbal abuse picked up the bust
any longer. and walked over to
the mezzanine.

267
 Jimenez Lai

Yes.

I did it.

I dropped the statue

on his head to
watch him bleed.

They tried to stop me.

I attacked them and chased
them away. This was my
time with him.
thresholds 40

Minutes? Hours?
I cannot remember how long.
The stillness was shared in I stood over him as the night
our finest moments together grew darker. Just watching.
felt like eternity.

268
 Sociopaths

I lived inside the walls

for him. This was our
relationship.

socio
The mitt must have
been on the grill. I left the kitchen
unattended.

The fire spread

very rapidly.

Flames and smoke

consumed his Villa.

I stayed with him for

as long as I could.

269
 Jimenez Lai

But really, It occured to me I could still save

he was my I could still save our friendship.
only friend. him.

I could still
save me.
thresholds 40

The smoke and heat finally I left him in the fire

grew too intense for me. and escaped alone.

270
 Sociopaths

Oh, the glory of I witnessed as it

his legacy. crumbled to ashes.

socio

My dead Master
Lock me up. I murdered him.
deserves justice.

271
 Jimenez Lai

The wifes
Story

Just silence. It was

Nobody the worst dinner.
spoke.
thresholds 40

I might have
glanced at his
classmate.

Regardless, he
Or he may have abruptly ended the His way.
thought I did. dinner party. Thats him.

272
 Sociopaths

You see, my late

husband was a Still, I could
very jealous I was never not gain his
man. unfaithful. trust.

socio
The house was
designed in a way
he could see me
from every corner.

He wanted to keep
an eye on me.

Nothing escapes
him. Thats him.

273
 Jimenez Lai

Did I know?
thresholds 40

Did I know that his

classmate could see me
from the guest bedroom if
I undressed?

How could I not Nothing

know? escapes this
house.

274
 Sociopaths

I did not stop Maybe I

his classmate. enjoyed the
attention?

Maybe I knew he
was gazing from
behind the split-wall?

socio

Maybe I wanted to
aggrevate him?

275
 Jimenez Lai

His attacks
knocked over the
candle.
thresholds 40

I ran up the mezzanine,

and took hold of the statue
in his image.

I did it.

I aimed at his head.

276
 Sociopaths

But his last gaze

Was he gawking
will forever haunt
at me?
me.

socio
Or at himself?

Nothing escapes him.

His gaze still I cannont live

I murdered him.
haunts me. with myself.

277
 Jimenez Lai

The classmates
Story

My old classmate
invited me to his
house for dinner.
thresholds 40

I think it was to
show off after all
these years.

What do you
think of my humble
abode?

278
 Sociopaths

There was nothing

humble about it. It He ignored my
looked like a palace. question about the
cost of his house.

How much
Its amazing!
did it cost?

Its not about

I only appreciate the
money, purpose, or
quality of things.
quantity.

All this money really socio

came from an idea we
I dont know what thought up together in
came over me, but school...
I joked with this
dangerous man. so, technically,
you owe me half!
Ha, ha.

279
 Jimenez Lai

To my surprise, he whipped
out his book and wrote me a
cheque for 3.5 billion dollars.

I suppose that
would be half.
thresholds 40

He conveyed the
cheque to me with
a fire-pit tong...

... but he struck

me in the face ... and he lit the
with it... cheque on fire.

280
 Sociopaths

He pushed me again
and again, paying no
attention to the burning
cheque as it lit a
curtain on fire.
I dont owe you
anything!

HALF?!

socio

You dont know

anything about
quality!

And this is why

you never could
take our idea
anywhere!

281
 Jimenez Lai

He was right.
I didnt know anyting
about his quality.
thresholds 40

Just like I always

Every room we fell into
remember him doing,
was a different world, a
he pushed me to the
redefined reality. With or
brink again and again,
without purpose.
into worlds I never
knew possible.

282
 Sociopaths

There was a statue

of him in the last I threw it at him with all
room of the house. despair. I wanted to kill
him with his own image.

socio
I wanted to be I wanted to enter a
liberated from our future without his
shared past. shadow.

So, detectives
I am a free man now. I will be a free man I am glad
whether you lock I killed him.
me up or not.

283
 Jimenez Lai

How do you reckon? They all confessed

to the murder.
thresholds 40

284
 Sociopaths

At least twoif not all

threeare sociopaths,
are liars.

But each time they

indulge in their
fictional world, they
describe a completely
different house.

Each house really

only articulated their
injured relationship
with the victim.

socio

A house, a confession, We are deep in the

a plausible motive... trenches between
lies and bullshit,
friendo...

To really appreciate architecture, you may even need to commit a murder (or three).

285
 Jimenez Lai
thresholds 40

***
Jimenez Lai is currently clinical assistant
professor at UIC and Leader of Bureau
Spectacular. He received his MArch from
the University of Toronto and previously
lived and worked in a desert shelter at
Taliesin, resided in a shipping container
at Atelier Van Lieshout on the piers of
Rotterdam, and worked at MOS, AVL, REX,
and OMA. His drawings and projects
have been featured at the New Museum,
archinect.com, Materials & Applications,
Extension Gallery, and Land of Tomorrow.
His Citizens of No Place will be published
by Princeton Architectural Press with a
grant from the Graham Foundation.

286
THRESHOLDS 40
SOCIO

Editor Patrons
Jonathan Crisman James Ackerman
Imran Ahmed
Designer Mark and Elaine Beck
Donnie Luu Tom Beischer
Yung Ho Chang
Assistant Editors Robert F. Drum
Ana Mara Len Gail Fenske
Jennifer Chuong Liminal Projects, Inc.
Antonio Furgiuele Rod Freebairn-Smith
Irina Chernyakova Nancy Stieber
Robert A. Gonzales
Advisory Board Jorge Otero-Pailos
Mark Jarzombek, Chair Annie Pedret
Stanford Anderson Vikram Prakash
Dennis Adams Joseph M. Siry
Martin Bressani Richard Skendzel
Jean-Louis Cohen
Charles Correa Special Thanks
Arindam Dutta To my family,
Diane Ghirardo Mark Jarzombek,
Ellen Dunham-Jones Sarah Hirschman,
Robert Haywood Adam Johnson,
Hassan-Uddin Khan Donnie Luu,
Rodolphe el-Khoury Nader Tehrani,
Leo Marx Adle Santos,
Mary McLeod Rebecca Chamberlain,
Ikem Okoye Jack Valleli,
Vikram Prakash Anne Deveau,
Kazys Varnelis Kate Brearley,
Cherie Wendelken Deborah Puleo,
Gwendolyn Wright Michael Ames,
J. Meejin Yoon and all of the authors, the
editorial team, the advisory
board, and the patrons.
This issue would not have
been possible without you.

Opposite: Intergalactic Sculpture, 1994.

Copyright Ezra Orion.
5 SOCIO-INDEMNITY 127 SCULPTURE FIELD
AND OTHER MOTIVES DAN HANDEL
JONATHAN CRISMAN
135 ON RADIATION BURN
11 CONJURING UTOPIAS GHOST STEVE KURTZ
REINHOLD MARTIN
163 CAIRO DI SOPRA IN GI
21 LE CORBUSIER, THE BRISE-SOLEIL, CHRISTIAN A. HEDRICK
AND THE SOCIO-CLIMATIC PROJECT
175 HUSH
DANIEL A. BARBER
STEVEN BECKLY AND
33 MOVE ALONG! JONATHAN D. KATZ
THERE IS NOTHING TO SEE
189 NORCS IN NEW YORK
RANIA GHOSN
INTERBORO PARTNERS
39 FLOWS SOCIO-SPATIAL FORMATION
209 UNCOMMON GROUND
NANA LAST
ZISSIS KOTIONIS
47 COLLECTIVE EQUIPMENTS OF POWER
217 EDENS, ISLANDS, ROOMS
SIMONE BROTT
AMRITA MAHINDROO
55 COLLECTIVE FORM
225 THE PRINCE
DANA CUFF
JUSTIN FOWLER
67 TUKTOYAKTUK
233 BEYOND DOING GOOD
PAMELA RITCHOT
HANNAH ROSE MENDOZA
75 BOUNDARY LINE INFRASTRUCTURE
237 AID, CAPITAL, AND THE
RONALD RAEL
HUMANITARIAN TRAP
83 DISSOLVING THE GREY PERIPHERY JOSEPH M. WATSON
NEERAJ BHATIA AND
245 THE END OF CIVILIZATION
ALEXANDER DHOOGHE
DANIEL DAOU
91 PARK AS PHILANTHROPY
255 TOWARD A LAKE ONTARIO CITY
YOSHIHARU TSUKAMOTO
DEPARTMENT OF
99 MUSSELS IN CONCRETE UNUSUAL CERTAINTIES
ESEN GKE ZDAMAR
263 SOCIOPATHS
105 PARTICIPATION AND/OR CRITICALITY? JIMENEZ LAI
KENNY CUPERS AND
MARKUS MIESSEN
113 THE SLUIPWEG AND THE
HISTORY OF DEATH
MARK JARZOMBEK

121 EXTRA ROOM

GUNNAR GREEN AND
BERNHARD HOPFENGRTNER