windingly float over the "no-man's-

land;' the wall, and the "death strip;•

a foreshadow of the angels Daniel
This century has been a losing battle with the issue of
and Cassie! , who walk between the
layers of the wall in Wim Wenders'
quantity.
latest film , Wings of Desire.
NAME 1
In spite of its early promise, its frequent bravery, urban-
They called me Lilly, Lil, Lillian,
but they didn 't want to accept Elvis, ism has been unable to invent and implement at the scale
and that got on my nerves. Here I
had paid perfectly good money- demanded by its apocalyptic demographics. In 20 years,
a whole $70 worth-to have my
name legally changed and nobody
wanted to call me by it.
Lagos has grown from 2 to 7 to 12 to 15 million; Istanbul
NAME 2
And then there was Rose.
has doubled from 6 to 12. China prepares for even more
Rose was her name and would she
have been Rose if her name had not staggering multiplications.
been Rose. She used to think and
then she used to think again. How to explain the paradox that urbanism, as a profes-
NAME3
PLEASE DON'T SEND LEITERS sion, has disappeared at the moment when urbanization
IN MY NAME WITHOUT ME
KNOWING.
NAME4
everywhere - after decades of constant acceleration -
The practice of identifying hurricanes
by giving them individual names
is on its way to establishing a definitive, global "triumph"
was initiated in Australia in the early
1900s by Clement Wragge. He took of the urban condition?
to naming anticyclones after people
he liked and low-pressure systems Modernism's alchemistic promise- to transform quantity
after people, notably politicians, that
he disliked. into quality through abstraction and repetition -has
NAME-DROP
Marvin, one of the richest men in the
world, does not do things by halves,
been a failure, a hoax: magic that didn't work. Its ideas,
and to guest at the ball he had flown
in some of the biggest names in film s,
aesthetics, strategies are finished. Together, all attempts
TV and politics. Cary Grant, Lucille
Ball, James Stewart, Raquel Welch, to make a new beginning have only discredited the idea
Lee Majors, Dolly Parton, Robert
Wagner, Diana Ross, Merv Griffin, of a new beginning. A collective shame in the wake of
Stefanie Powe rs, Henry Kissinger
and ex-president Gerald Ford were this fiasco has left a massive crater in our understanding
just some of the famo us faces on
the glittering dais, along with John,
Linda, John, James, Kathleen Beller
of modernity and modernization.
and Michael Nader (two new faces
on " Dynasty") and me.
What makes this experience disconcerting and (for
NAMELESS 1
It is hard to tell you what it was pre- architects) humiliating is the city 's defiant persistence
cisely she wanted to wrest from me.
Obviously it would be something and apparent vigor, in spite of the collective failure of all
very simple - the simplest impossi-
bility in the world; as, for instance, agencies that act on it or try to influence it-creatively,
the exact description of the form of
a cloud.
She wanted an assurance, a state-
logistically, politically.
ment, a promise, an explanation - I
don 't know how to call it; the thing
The professionals of the city are like chess players who
has no name.
lose to computers. A perverse automatic pilot constantly
960
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NAMELESS 2
A name can evoke everything and
outwits all attempts at capturing the city, exhausts all
nothing. but it's always a bo ulder
that won't le t you pass. l know. I'm ambitions of its definition, ridicules the most passionate
a specialist. l want to keep you pure
and her name less. assertions of its present failure and future impossibility,
NARCISSISM
In literature. indeed. even the great steers it implacably further on its flight forward. Each
c riminal and the humo rist comply
our interest by the narc issistic self
importance with which they manage
disaster foretold is somehow absorbed under the infinite
to keep at arm 's length everything
which would d iminish the impo r-
blanketing of the urban.
tance o f their ego.
NATURAL
Even as the apotheosis of urbanization is glaringIy
If, therefore . you wis h to make one
o f your imaginary animals appear obvious and mathematically inevitable, a chain of rear-
natura l - let us s uppose it to be a
dragon - take fo r its head that of a
mast iff or sette r, for its eyes those
guard, escapist actions and positions postpones the final
of a cat, for its cars those o f a porcu-
pine, fo r its nose that of a greyhound,
moment of reckoning for the two professions formerly
with eyebrows of a lion. t he temples
o f an old cock. and the neck of a
most implicated in making cities - architecture and
water torto ise.
NEEDLES urbanism. Pervasive urbanization has modified the urban
The Needles make up one long,
horizontal image of strange pha llic condition itself beyond recognition. "The" city no longer
shapes, reaching up at the s ky, irreg-
ular, asymmetrical, rugged, eerie,
s mooth. The o utside and in have
exists. As the concept of city is distorted and stretched
become intercha ngeable. The dis-
tance, the illegibilit y of the form s:
beyond precedent, each insistence on its primordial
loo k down someone's throat, it looks
like a cave.
condition -in terms of images, rules, fabrication -
NERVE
Why do we ha ve a mind , if not to get irrevocably leads via nostalgia to irrelevance.
our own way?
NERVED For urbanists, the belated rediscovery of the virtues of
Our hearts pound w ith fresh blood
and emot io n and again we find our-
selves s tanding the re all nerved up
the classical city at the moment of their definitive
in body and mind.
NEUTRAL
impossibility may have been the point of no return, fatal
There is no neutral s urface. no neutral
discourse, no neutral theme, no neu-
moment of disconnection, disqualification. They are
tral fo rm.
NEUTRALITY now specialists in phantom pain: doctors discussing the
No part of the text s ho uld be deliv-
ered with any special e motio n. No medical intricacies of an amputated limb.
gestures e ither. Just the e motion
aroused by the unveiling o f the words. The transition from a former position of power to a
NEW 1
How are we to see the probl em of
e levational treatme nts in the light
reduced station of relative humility is hard to perform.
of the new building materials?
NEW 2
Dissatisfaction with the contemporary city has not led
C an C osme tic S urgery Help Yo u?
Try your new nose today ! to the development of a credible alternative; it has,
Try your new face today !
Send this coupon today! on the contrary, inspired only more refined ways of
962 963
NEW YORK 1
Ten years ago, I wrote a book about articulating dissatisfaction. A profession persists in its
New York which was an investigation
into another kind of modernity - fantasies, its ideology, its pretension, its illusions of
not the European modernity of
the twenties and thirties which con- involvement and control, and is therefore incapable of
sisted of a dream that was not real-
ized. What fascinated me about
New York was that in the twenties
conceiving new modesties, partial interventions, strategic
and thirties, buildings like
Rockefeller Center were as revolu-
realignments, compromised positions that might influ-
tionary as the architecture in Europe,
but built, realized, and maybe more ence, redirect, succeed in limited terms, regroup, begin
important-popular. So New York's
great vi rtue, in my eyes, is that it from scratch even, but will never reestablish control.
presents a modernity that is not
a lienated from the population but is Because the generation of May '68 - the largest genera-
in fact, populistic.
NEW YORK2
The other areas of Manhattan such
tion ever, caught in the "collective narcissism of a
as Lower East Side and The Bowery
offer discount bargains, unusual
demographic bubble" - is now finally in power, it is
trendy restaurants, and great buys
in lighting and kitchen equipment. tempting to think that it is responsible for the demise
However, it ·s best to avoid them at
night. Northern parts of Manhattan. of urbanism -the state of affairs in which cities can no
such as Harlem, are worth exploring
with an organized tour. longer be made -paradoxically because it rediscovered
NICE
This time l was nice, braked in time
and moved out of his way. Next time
and reinvented the city.
I may not be so nice. Perhaps I may
not be able to brake in time.
Sous le pave, la plage (under the pavement, beach):
NICER
Buildings under construction look initially, May '68 launched the idea of a new beginning
nicer than buildings finished.
NIGHTCAP for the city. Since then, we have been engaged in two
From the stairwe ll came the sound
of rather beautiful singing. A Welsh parallel operations: documenting our overwhelming
guest, very drunk, was wishing
everyone goodnight.
NIGHTMARES
awe for the existing city, developing philosophies,
"Grunder;' "Fleerde;' "Egeldonk"
were the barbaric names of the night-
projects, prototypes for a preserved and reconstituted
mares to which architects, with hol-
low laughter, had here given shape. city and, at the same time, laughing the professional
NOMAD
I can't feel pity for you in Manhattan's field of urbanism out of existence, dismantling it in
grid : a good nomad carries his iden-
tity on hi s back, wherever he is, even our contempt for those who planned (and made huge
in the Waldorf.
NON-CAPTIVE
Whoever you arc, come out. You are
mistakes in planning) airports, New Towns, satellite
free. The people who held you are
captives themselves. We heard you
cities, highways, high-rise buildings, infrastructures,
crying and we came to deliver you.
We have bound your enemies upsta irs and all the other fallout from modernization. After
hand and foot. You are free.
NONSTOP sabotaging urbanism, we have ridiculed it to the
Ships are virtually noating resorts.
Ships now have domed indoor/ point where entire university departments are closed,
964 965
 outdoor centers for nonstop enter-
tainment. dining, and dancing, health
offices bankrupted, bureaucracies fired or privatized.
facilities, spas, computer centers
with instructors, and fitness programs. Our "sophistication" hides major symptoms of cowardice
NOODLES
The Japanese love noodles, especially centered on the simple question of taking positions -
instant noodles that can be heated
and slurped down in minutes. They
bought $4 billion worth of the m last
maybe the most basic action in making the city. We are
year. and almost certainl y will con-
sume even more in the years ahead.
simultaneously dogmatic and evasive. Our amalgamated
Companies keep coming up with
easier ways for hurried people to eat
wisdom can be easily caricatured: according to Derrida
them. First came noodles in bags,
then noodles in cups. Now the giant we cannot be Whole, according to Baudrillard we cannot
Nissin Food Products Co. has con-
ceived of noodles in self-heating be Real, according to Virilio we cannot be There.
cans that can be take n anywhere;
no cooking is necessary. "Exiled to the Virtual World": plot for a horror movie.
NORMAL
In this "normal" house, the couple
never sit or sleep together. They
Our present relationship with the "crisis" of the city is
quarrel standing up, and always
leave the house separately. It is as
deeply ambiguous: we still blame others for a situation
if they want to say that they cannot
go on li ving together, because their for which both our incurable utopianism and our
house is so normal. and therefore
they have to look for lovers outside. contempt are responsible. Through our hypocritical
NOT
Le futu r de !'architecture n 'est pas
architectural.
relationship with power- contemptuous yet covetous -
NOVELLA
It depends on how you perceive it;
we dismantled an entire discipline, cut ourselves off
to some people, Soviet Power is not
power, but a novella.
from the operational, and condemned whole populations
NUMBER
The pleasure of being in crowds is to the impossibility of encoding civilizations on their
a mysterious expression of sensual
joy in the multiplicatio n of Number. territory- the subject of urbanism.
All is Number. Number is in all.
Number is in the individual. Ecstasy
is a Number.
Now we are left with a world without urbanism, only
architecture, ever more architecture. The neatness of
0 architecture is its seduction; it defines, excludes, limits,
OBJECTLESSNESS separates from the "rest" - but it also consumes. It
Thus when man, investi gating,
observing, ensnares nature as an area exploits and exhausts the potentials that can be generated
of his own conceiving, he has already
been claimed by a way of revealing
that challenges him to approach
finally only by urbanism, and that only the specific
nature as an object of research, until
even the object disappears into the
imagination of urbanism can invent and renew.
objectlessness of standing-reserve.
OBJECTS 1
The death of urbanism - our refuge in the parasitic
Our plan is to drop a lot of odd objects
onto your co untry from the air. And security of architecture - creates an immanent disaster:
some of these objects will be useful.
And some will just be ... odd. more and more substance is grafted on starving roots.
966 967
OBJECTS2
It 's Daria 's 1hi rteenth birthday party. In our more permissive moments, we have surrendered to
There are fifteen or twen1y people
in lhe room; I don '1 know most of the aesthetics of chaos- "our" chaos. But in the technical
them. Stash and I sit on the couch
and watch her open her prese nts:
the gi fl from us of a Godzi lla lig hter
sense chaos is what happens when nothing happens, not
(names shoo! out of Godzilla's
mouth); a record of Maria Callas
something that can be engineered or embraced; it is some-
singing "Norma.. : a silk survival
map o f the Arc tic Circle: a glue gun; thing that infiltrates; it cannot be fabricated. The only
a casse11e tape of Teenage Jesus and
the Je rks; a large black plastic object legitimate relationship that architects can have with the
wi th a pink pyramid-shaped cover
(possibly made by the Memphis subject of chaos is to take their rightful place in the army
Design Collecti ve) w hich might be
a breadbox o r an ice b ucket: a ten-
pound bag of Eukan uba health food
of those devoted to resist it, and fail.
for dogs; a book about wrestling;
and a Statue of Liberty hat - a spiky
If there is to be a "new urbanism" it will not be based on
helmet o f nexible foa m. Daria puts
it on. the twin fantasies of order and omnipotence; it will be the
OBLIGATION
Whal maners is no1 that people believe staging of uncertainty; it will no longer be concerned with
1he rhecoric but 1hat t hey feel obliged
10 repeal ii. the arrangement of more or less permanent objects but
OBLIGATI ONS
For a long time I stayed away from
the Acropolis. It daunted me. t hat
with the irrigation of territories with potential; it will no
sombe r rock. I preferred to wander
in the modern ci ty, imperfec t. blaring.
longer aim for stable configurations but for the creation
The weig ht a nd momen1 of t hose
of enabling fields that accommodate processes that refuse
to be crystallized into definitive form; it will no longer be
about meticulous definition, the imposition of limits, but
about expanding notions, denying boundaries, not about
separating and identifying entities, but about discovering
unnameable hybrids; it will no longer be obsessed with the
city but with the manipulation of infrastructure for endless
intensifications and diversifications, shortcuts and redistrib-
utions - the reinvention of psychological space. Since the
urban is now pervasive, urbanism will never again be about
the "new;' only about the "more" and the "modified:' It will
not be about the civilized, but about underdevelopment.
Since it is out of control, the urban is about to become a
major vector of the imagination. Redefined, urbanism will
969
 worked stones promised to make
the business of seeing them a com- not only, or mostly, be a profession, but a way of think-
plicated one. So much converges
there. It 's what we·ve rescued from ing, an ideology: to accept what exists. We were making
the madness. Beauty, dignity, order,
proportion. There are obligations
attached to s uch a visit.
sand castles. Now we swim in the sea that swept them
OBLIVIOUS
What I like in Bataille's description
away.
of the Place de la Concorde is that he
always insists on t he fact that people To survive, urbanism will have to imagine a new newness.
drive the ir cars around it without
not ic ing it. Liberated from its atavistic duties, urbanism redefined
OBSOLETE
No man wants to be to ld what they ' re as a way of operating on the inevitable will attack archi-
wearing is obsolete next season. It 's
like making fun of the m.
OBSTACLES
tecture, invade its trenches, drive it from its bastions,
T here are also many intervening
o bs tac les built into townscapes by
undermine its certainties, explode its limits, ridicule its
local authoritie and developers.
These include: rough pavements: preoccupations with matter and substance, destroy its
poorly positioned street furniture;
kerbs which are too steep or badly traditions, smoke out its practitioners.
located: wind t unnels caused by the
design a nd s hape of buildings, mak- The seeming failure of the urban offers an exceptional
ing access across a publ ic concourse
impossible under certain weather
conditions; poorly positioned car
opportunity, a pretext for Nietzschean frivolity. We have
parks and parking spaces designated
for the d isabled; pedestrian isation
to imagine 1,001 other concepts of city; we have to take
schemes which do not allow disabled
access; and one-way systems which insane risks; we have to dare to be utterly uncritical;
take the tra ffi c away from s hops and
city centres. we have to swallow deeply and bestow forgiveness left
OCCUPATION 1
An elephant spe nds e ighteen hours and right. The certainty of failure has to be our laughing
out of twenty-four in search o f the
three to f'ive hundred pounds of vege-
tation and t wenty-five to fift y gallons
gas/oxygen; modernization our most potent drug. Since
of wate r it req uires da ily.
OCCUPATION 2
we are not responsible, we have to become irresponsible.
This is definitely a full- ti me occu-
pation. In a landscape of increasing expediency and imperma-
ODOR
The odor of "good tas te" can often nence, urbanism no longer is or has to be the most solemn
be dispelled by the introduct ion o f
" mean ing," as long as meaning is of our decisions; urbanism can lighten up, become a
retrieved from former ly unaccept-
able sources (the archaic, the mod-
e rne and s treamlined, and the more
Gay Science -Lite Urbanism.
domestic forms of the inept).
OLDER
What if we simply declare that there is no crisis -
T hey had taken o ut such a good
ins urance policy that when their redefine our relationship with the city not as its makers
house in the country burnt down ,
they were able to build another o ne but as its mere subjects, as its supporters?
older than the first.
OOH More than ever, the city is all we have. 1994
Used to express amazement, j oy or
s urprise.

970 971