The Real and the Theoretical, 1968

Author(s): LUCIA ALLAIS

Source: Perspecta, Vol. 42, THE REAL PERSPECTA (2010), pp. 27-41
Published by: The MIT Press on behalf of Perspecta.
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 27

The Real and

the Theoretical, 1968
LUCIA ALLAIS

Fig. 1: Peter Eisenman, Harlem Plan , 1968.

THE REAL PERSPECTA 42

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 THE REAL AND THE THEORETICAL 28

Sometime in late July or early August 1968, American architect Peter

Eisenman sat in the Manhattan offices of his just-founded Institute for
Architecture and Urban Studies, tore off a piece of yellow tracing pa-
per, and wrote, in capital lettering, the title "HARLEM PLAN." Inking
over pencil lines, he finalized an organizational chart that connected his
Institute with a "Harlem School" by way of the New York chapter of the
civil-rights organization, the Urban League [Fig. 1]. The chart outlined
a complex pedagogical sequence based on the phases of architectural
design. In the accompanying text, Eisenman described this "new type
of educational mechanism in Harlem" by starting from a basic equation:

Black America is in essence urban America. Whether by default or

by design the cities have been left to the urban blacks. Today they
represent the only true urban culture that exists in this country.1

An unprecedented window of opportunity had opened, Eisenman con-

tinued, for a combined solution to two problems: the failure of Mod-
ernist urbanism and the disenfranchisement of ghetto populations. In a
Fig. 2: Peter Eisenman, 1967. Fig. 3: Livingston "Leroy"
lengthy exposition, he argued that the demise of one urban mythWingate,
could 1968.
lead to the rise of another:
much more kindly: "the 20th century city" is depicted as a failure, then
The black American needs a myth, something to
readily surrendered to believe in,
a constituency as an emergency measure against
something which will give structure andalienation.
meaning In a concerted
to his break
life.with
Thisan entire tradition of Modern plan-
ning discourse,
cannot be a literal or oversimplified mythology such"theas
modern
the utopia
study on earth" is no longer offered as a
technocratic instrument
and belief in African history, . . . [or] institutions such asof social welfare, but rather as an iconographie
schools
and museums of black cultural artifacts ... It would seem that fix to a problem of mythological bankruptcy.
such a myth must come from the deeper, more encompassingMost out of character, perhaps, is the implied pragmatism of the
structure of the black community and the black individual. argument, whose validity depends solely on a set of historical condi-
tions for action, an "opportunity." The black American and the 20th
century utopia, both of which have demanded in vain to be valued as
It is here that the equation of black America and urban America
becomes critical. ends in themselves, can achieve their goals by becoming each other's
means, by instrumentalization. This pragmatism is also evident in the
successive drafts of the proposal in which Eisenman reformulated the
The modern city, the utopia on earth, has been the dream if not
alignment of the I AUS and the NYUL's "goals," long after he captured
the reality of much contemporary thought and work in the areas
the "problem" with the phrase, "Black America is Urban America."6 For
of city planning. For various reasons the climate for any realistic
movement toward this goal was not right. However, . . . theretheis League's youth, "the initiation of the new black myth of the future
city" would yield empowerment. For the Institute's architects, it would
an opportunity now. There is not one aspect in the range of urban
deliver design work.
problems, which has the potential power and image value which
could be useful toward creating a black "myth", more important This is also not the Institute to which architectural historians have

than the building of a new physical environment- the 20th

become accustomed: the birthplace of American formalism, the incuba-
century city. And there is no reason to assume that this cannot
tor of a distinctly American brand of architectural theory, and a cultural
rightly be called a black responsibility.2 institution that helped, in the words of Peter Lemos, "to make American
architecture arty, international, and intellectual."7 Eisenman had found-
ed the I AUS in 1967 with the frankly vanguardist goal of combining
This text was followed by a concrete proposal to fund and staff "a sta-
intense formal experimentation and rigorous intellectual speculation in
tion to teach the basics of fundamental design to young black students"
in Harlem, "bringing forward in the individual latent knowledge ofonehis space. Throughout the 1970s, the IAUS became an influential cul-
environment" and then "re-applying it to the design of a model blocktural center, attracting a stellar network of scholars and students from
prototypical of future Harlem."3 American and European universities and providing a vibrant disciplin-
This is not the Eisenman to which architects have become ac- ary forum while architectural education and practice were in crisis. Yet
customed: not the unrepentant formalist who disorients his subjects, when
notthe Harlem Plan was proposed in 1968, the IAUS consisted prin-
cipally
the dedicated postmodernist seeking a neo-purist whiteness, not the pro- of Eisenman [Fig. 2], his mentor Colin Rowe, and their student
Alexander Caragonne.
cess-driven designer intent on conceptual density, and not the self-ref-
erential deconstructionist for whom cities are but collections of traces.4What, then, are we to make of this improbable collaboration with
the Urban League? Unlike the brand-new Institute, the League was a
Instead of an "evasive and complex, singular and contentious"5 project,
venerable African-American social-service association which had es-
we find a clearly stated analysis and an assertively proposed collabora-
tablished
tive solution. To be sure, the argument is culturally insensitive and the a network in over eighty American cities since its founding in
discourse totalizing. "African history" is dismissed as a frivolous 1911,
belief;and which had been charged in the 1964 War on Poverty with a
"black cultural artifacts" are judged unsubstantial. The "black Ameri-
broad mandate for reform- and the federal funds to match.8 The League
can" is purely the carrier of a degree-zero subjectivity that provides
was far from a radical group, but like the mainstream of the civil-rights
movement, it veered away from legal advocacy, in the mid-1960s, and
access to "deeper structure." Clearly, this is a blank-slate epistemology,
which connotes a tabula rasa urbanism. But if Eisenman denies Har- towards more visible street-based activism. In 1968, the national lead-
ership changed its logo to reflect bolder ambitions ("We have a new
lem its living heritage, the legacy of Modern architecture is not treated

THE REfìL PERSPECTfi 42

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 LUCIA ALLAIS 29

big. 5: Livingston Wingate, Organizational diagram tor a Black Leadership Institute, 196».

commanded an operating budget "relate them to their environment."14 It was in

of millions;
the draft contract for the Harlem School
response to (two
this diagram that Eisenman drew
his own
full-time instructors, one secretary, "Harlem
ten stu- Plan," placing architectural
dents, one street-front office, and architectural
training at the center instead. Thus the NYUL
supplies) would have increased the
wasInstitute's
seeking a radical rewriting of black urban
subjectivity, too, and Eisenman's description
operating budget by 150 percent.11
of the ghetto as a place to grow a new urban
Here then, the line between theoretical
mythology prag-
took a cue from the League itself.
matism and financial opportunism begins
Similarly, to
by making architecture the link be-
tween street
blur. But must we then paint a sinister and institute, Eisenman took a cue
picture
of an elite architectural start-up co-opting
from Wingate the
's privileging of architecture and
cause of a disenfranchised population in as
planning order
the "techniques" of leadership.
to receive federal funds?

The Harlem Plan was never realized. Wingate

The answer is complicated both by the chro-and Eisenman met for the last time in mid-
nology of events and by the pragmatic ten-September 1968. While no explanation for the
Fig. 4: The National Urban League adopts a
new symbol, 1968. dencies of the NYUL itself. It was Wingate split is recorded in the archives, some prob-
who first solicited Eisenman, inviting him to able causes can be surmised. In late August,
symbol," declared the newsletter) and theparticipate
new in the creation of "a think tank de-riots broke out at the National Democratic
director of the New York chapter, Livingston
voted to discussing the development of blackConvention in Chicago, significantly altering
(Leroy) Wingate, inaugurated an "Open Hous-communities."12 The stated goal of this "Black the national mood. In September, an ongoing
ing" campaign to end rental discrimination in
Leadership Institute" was to form "a radicallystandoff between Jewish teachers and black
different person- a philosopher-technician-parents in Brooklyn's Ocean Hill-Brownsville
New York [Figs. 3, 4]. 9 Wingate was a protégé
of Harlem congressman Adam Clayton Pow- school district polarized New York City [Fig.
able to think, operate, and put into effect, with
ell, who had appointed him as the head the of aability to do so in both worlds- that of6] , prompting the League to take a very public
well-funded experimental educational Americapro- at large and that of the inner city instance in favor of school decentralization, and
gram in Harlem called HARYOU-ACT. At
particular."13 ultimately rendering suspect the reliance on
Wingate had originally proposed
HARYOU, Wingate had used federal funds
a centralized organization, where "leadership"
white expertise for black educational advance-
would arise from a concentration of constitu-
to organize "community pacification" activi- ment.15 Wingate's own radicalization over the
were around the League- including "disad-summer of 1968 is a useful index of this shift.
ties such as festivals and parades, which encies
vantaged youth," neighborhood boards, andIn July, he wrote to Eisenman that his think
understood by white leaders to be guarantees
militant groups like the Five Percenters [Fig.
against a repeat of the riots of 1964. Although tank needed "white expertise"; by October, he
5]. The core curriculum, provided by experts
Wingate had resigned in the midst of a massive published an article declaring that in educa-
financial scandal, his tenure at HARYOU assembled
and under the heading "You Intellectu- tional matters "we must honestly embrace sep-
als!" consisted of "Law, Economics, Psychol-aration."16 By then, Eisenman had initiated a
its large budget clearly lay behind his appoint-
ogy, and Planning, Etc." But Wingate maderelated project, to set up an "Agency for Plan-
ment to the League, and it was some of these
clear that "architecture and city planning" ning and Development" within the National
funds that Eisenman hoped to channel towards
architecture.10 Indeed, while Eisenman's Insti-
were the only two "technical subjects" to be Association for the Advancement of Col-
included, because they were "closely related to
tute completed its first year with under $70,000 ored People (NAACP), in collaboration with
of private donations and bank loans, the NYUL the Department of Housing and Urban
the life of the people in the ghetto" and able to

THE REAL PERSPECTfi 42

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 THE REAL AND THE THEORETICAL 30

Development (HUD).17 The plantheir appears

"will to form" onto an unsuspecting Har-
nev-
lem.22 In contrast,
er to have reached past the proposal stage. aHad year later, the Harlem Plan
either of these collaborations gone
offered thisforward,
"will to form" to a specific constit-
further conflicts may have been
uency, encountered
as a gesture of political empowerment.23
anyway. Already in the spring Theof
offer was notWing-
1968, unconditional: lest Harlem
ate was noisily protesting thebedevelopment
"rebuilt in the image
ofof an African village,"
Eisenman
a state office building in Harlem by resisted demands for teaching Af-
Ed Logue,
who was soon to become one of the IAUS's
rican history and collecting African cultural
major patrons.18 Eisenman also seems to haveartifacts- demands commonly made by black
been weary of Wingate's desire to engageorganizations,
Co- including the Urban League, to
lumbia University, only a few months after protest the white educational establishment.24
riots had been triggered by community oppo- HARYOU's inaugural study, Kenneth Clark's
massive 1964 Youth in the Ghetto , had shown
sition to the construction of a university gym
in Morningside Heights.19 Simply put, the through an extensive analysis of Harlem's ur-
IAUS-NYUL collaboration never occurred be- ban fabric that ghettos were "in fact social,
political, educational, and- above all- eco-
cause by October 1968, the "opportunity" had
passed. nomic colonies."25 Clark had turned his atten-
Yet the historical fate of this project tion to the city a decade after his famous doll
does not answer the question of its intellectual study (which showed the negative influence of
validity. Does this Eisenman text qualify as a white dolls on the self-image of black children)
piece of architectural theory? Or is it merely a played a major role in the decision of Brown v.
Fig. 7: The New City: Architecture and
fundraising exercise performed to achieve in- Board of Education.26 In this shift from dolls to
Urban Renewal , 1967.
stitutional legitimacy? ghettos as sources of a collective self-image,
As an institution-building activity, the political autonomy (for the American ghetto).
visits to Africa and courses in African history
Harlem Plan seems to fit uncomfortably in the had come to be seen as the basis for a post-Most generously, the Harlem Plan could be un-
early history of the IAUS- in particular, the derstood as an attempt to devise a post-MoMA
colonial cultural autonomy. From this perspec-
history of what Kenneth Frampton has called tive, Eisenman's 1968 proposal to replace Afri-
ghetto formalism.27
the "shotgun marriage" arranged by Arthur can history with "the myth of the 20th century Why this ghetto formalism never came
Drexler of the Museum of Modern Art and to fruition is plainly evident in the Institute's
city" was a departure from the cultural politics
Ed Logue of the New York State Urban De- of the League, which sent its high school stu- next major urban project, where the marriage
dents to Africa in June 1968, as much as it was
sign Corporation (UDC).20 Consider the better- of museum patronage and urban reform was
known Harlem project that sparked the cre- a departure from the curatorial programs of theeventually consummated: the "Low-rise, High
MoMA, which had considered Harlem a hypo-
ation of the Institute: the 1967 New City show, Density" housing project commissioned by the
for which Drexler assigned hypothetical sites UDC and exhibited in 1973 as Another Chance
thetical place in 1967 [Fig. 8]. But at its most
to four teams of Ivy League planners and ex- ambitious, the Harlem Plan was a proposal for Housing. The project was promoted as "not
for aligning these two organizations' claimsanother theoretical exercise," but rather as
hibited the results at the MoMA [Fig. 7].21 The
to autonomy: a claim of aesthetic autonomyan encounter with "real problems with a real
show earned the architects the critique of being
site."28 But critics did not fail to note the dis-
(for Modern architecture) and a project of
"not Utopian enough," having merely unleashed
tance between "the stifling reality of Brook-
lyn's Brownsville section" and "the air-condi-
tioned abstraction of the Museum of Modern
Art." This real-theoretical divide also dictated
the terms by which the project was evaluated
once it was built in 1980, as a "compromised
ideal" that "deformed. . .the constraints of real-
ity."29 Instead of producing an alignment be-
tween two projects of autonomy, the Institute's
urban vision was realized by mapping political
and aesthetic realms neatly onto a division be-
tween real and theoretical.
Nor does the "black myth of the future
city" function as a plausible precedent for the
way Institute thinkers eventually theorized the
"myth" of urban form. "Myth" became the pre-
ferred pejorative term for an unexamined ide-
ology in early 1970s Institute discourse- the
paradigmatic example being functionalism, a
basic theoretical fallacy that was the source of
Modernism's social failures.30 This usage of
"myth" was meant to eradicate exactly the il-
Fig. 6: Rally against the Ocean Hill -Brownsville School Experiment, City Hall,
lusion that architects had any political agency
September 16, 1968. of the kind the Harlem Plan proposed to give

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 LUCIA ALLAIS 31

in "the era of corporate responsibility."34 But it the relative configuration of students, experts,
was also an active planning instrument, whose buildings, and funds. For example, the fact that
branded visibility was crucial for externalizing the Ocean Hill-Brownsville school experiment
the experiences of dropouts into a redesign of was funded by the Ford Foundation confirmed
the streetscape. to the League that a direct channel had opened
Even as a path never taken then, the for private philanthropy to effect education re-
Harlem Plan reveals plainly why there was a form, and this channel needed not to include
"U" in IAUS: because "urban" was a crucial
any self-actualizing myth of the street-archi-
category of funding in 1968, essential to the
tect. Thus, as it split from the IAUS in Septem-
operation of any architectural agency.35ber
For a
1968, the NYUL received a grant from the
brief moment in the summer of 1968, two Rockefeller
dif- Foundation to create a new street
academy,
ferent institutions sought to take advantage of unrelated to architecture or plan-
the massive amounts of capital available ning.36
under Conversely, once the IAUS secured the
the label "urban," while addressing thehybrid
open public-private sponsorship of the UDC,
Eisenman no longer needed any element of
secret that this label was essentially a social-
scientific euphemism for "black." The community
New participation to re-examine the
York Urban League attempted to get myth blackof Modernist urbanism. Thus, when the
IAUS eventually intervened in the same Ocean
youth involved in urbanism, while the Institute
Hill-Brownsville neighborhood in 1973, it was
for Architecture and Urban Studies attempted
to get architects involved in black affairs.inOnce
the traditional role of the architect: by build-
the opportunity passed, "urban" becameing a eu-
a housing project, whose only relationship
Fig. 8: Forty Acres and a Mule,
September 1968. phemism once again. to the "myth of the black American" was that
Yet despite its cultural implausibil- it was named after Marcus Garvey, of black
black Americans through architectural re- ity, the significance of the Harlem Plannationalist may fame. The Harlem Plan describes
education. Diana Agrest introduced the IAUSwell lie in its institutional verisimilitude. The an alternate Institute that may well have come
to a more complex theorization of the city IAUS
as went on to foster a three-way combina- to be; what changed in 1968 was the relative
"the modern form of myth," based on Roland tion of private sponsorship, public work, and configuration of means and ends.
Barthes's interpretation of myth as "a type
of speech." But the myth itself was far from
empowering: for Barthes, post-industrial sub-
jectivity was exemplified by a "new Robinson
Crusoe" who lived not "on a desert island but
in a city of twelve million inhabitants, able to
decipher neither its speech nor its writing."31
The only urban project to take the city as the
site of both theorization and empowerment
was the project on "Streets as components of
the urban environment," led by Stanford An-
derson, which proposed a new plan for the
upstate community of Binghamton, based on
an elaborate socio-morphological survey of its
streets. But the inhabitants of these streets were
not builders of a new architectural myth; they
were participants in a multidisciplinary bid to
de-mythologize the street altogether, and re-
instate it in architectural discourse after years
of vilification.32 By contrast, the 1968 Harlem
Plan was designed to build on the success of
the Urban League's "Street Academy experi-
ment," a vocational program started in 1966
to attract dropouts "from the streets" back to
school by turning abandoned storefronts into
walk-in tutoring "academies" [Fig. 9]. Each
Fig. 9: The IBM Street Academy.
Street Academy was sponsored by a corporate
specialized architectural production that isThe
donor, and the League advertised their visibili- notepisode of the Harlem Plan raises funda-
ty in the Harlem streetscape as a distinguishing mental questions about how to write the his-
altogether very different from the one proposed
feature of a new type of philanthropy. "IBM
in the Harlem Plan. Replacing the "black tory
stu- of American architectural theory and the
dents" with undergraduates from Bryn Mawr,
has a new facility on West 1 14th Street," boast- role of 1968 as a marker in this historiography.
ed the brochure, and "they'd welcome some
Cornell, and Oberlin, and replacing the Urban
From the authoritative anthologies and the re-
League with the UDC yields a fairly accurate
competition."33 The Harlem street was the site cent surge in literature on the subject, a con-
of a disciplinary experiment, which signaled
diagram of what the Institute became in the sensus
first seems to have emerged that the history
half of the 1970s. What changed in 1968 of
"the end of the genius-academic," and ushered wastheory begins in 1968. "It does not seem

THE REfiL PERSPECTfi 42

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 THE REAL AND THE THEORETICAL 32

particularly controversial," writes

Harlem Michael
Plan, projects that "really happened" office. It has the potential to influence
Hays in the opening line ofinhis monumental
1968 but do not register in the history of other institutions and other studies outside

theory.
anthology Architecture Theory Nor 1968
Since does it ,help
"toto explicate how the specific contexts of this study.47
theory established
mark the beginning of contemporary itself as a very real cul-
architec-
ture theory in 'the sixties' -with
tural institution
all theafter
chang-
1968. 44 These questions This equation between independence and
point beyond
es in political theory and practice, the foundational texts of archi- influence has earned the Institute a steady
the history
tectural theory,
of philosophy, the world economy, and and beyond the memory of stream of critiques from its earliest days, as its
general
cultural production that thethose
date whoconnotes."37
wrote them, to look instead at the institutional detachment has consistently been
institutional
With this connotative strategy, Haysformations
wisely that supported this taken for willful elitism. Some critics have
presumed
avoids historicizing a genealogy retreat and
of critical to examine the role perceived in its ties to the MoMA a "return to
texts
that did so much to question played, in this entire
the claims discursive framework, the idea of architecture as art"; others have de-
of his-
toricism. It is because theory by actors who
taught were not authors. The second tected in its corporate affiliations a debasement
architects
to forgo allegiance to what Hays calls
half of this addresses these questions by of American architecture into a "culture indus-
"history
article
as it really happened" that he analyzing
resortsone waytothe gap between real and try," and many have interpreted the "intellec-
con-
notation, leaving only the crucial theoretical was institutionalized at the I AUS:
denotative tualization of architecture" through European
detail of the date, 1968. Joan fromOckman,
without- by whose
considering the I AUS theory
as as a gesture of political neutralization,
own seminal Architecture Culture 1943-1968 an American think-tank among others- and akin to the one made in 1932 when the MoMA
from within- by considering grant- writingexhibited
established the genre, recently took a similar as European Modernism in America
a form
stance vis-à-vis 1968, setting aside "history as of theoretical production among oth- under the label International Styled The most
ers.of
it really was" to look instead for a "concept The aim is modest: to contribute to the trenchant critique, formulated by Italian his-
intellectual history of architectural theory-
that history."38 Hays and Ockman both appeal torian Manfredo Tafuri in 1978, was that in
to cultural critic Frederic Jameson, who towas"help to construct the intrigue,"45 in the away from urban projects, the Institute
turning
words of Paul Veyne- by suggesting one
himself inspired by French political thinker had specialized into an urbane "boudoir." The
possible
Louis Althusser.39 But the real target of the at- claims to formal and institutional autonomy
connection between the institutional
structure of the I AUS and the theoretical na-
tack on "history as it really happened" is argu- were, for Tafuri, merely symptoms of "the or-
ture of its discourse.
ably the father of modern historical objectivity ganizational structure of intellectual work in
himself, Leopold von Ranke, who argued in What is the relation between the IAUS's America," which forced Institute thinkers into
1824 that to do historical work was to collect intellectual project for autonomy and its oft-an "exaltation of [their] own apartness" and
stated independence as a "non-profit educa-
archival facts and recount, in the greatest pos- their architecture into an aesthetic formaliza-

sible detail, history "as it really was"- wie tional

es corporation"? The answer begins with tion of bureaucratic life. Subsequent critiques
eigentlich gewesen.40 Against this Rankean the Institute's hybridity, which has been have a followed this diagnosis of the Institute as
archival project, architectural historiography consistent motif of its chroniclers since its a bubble of Manhattanite solitude, "an intel-
inception. In 1967, Ada Louise Huxtable
tends toward a Burckhardtian cultural history, lectual pressure group" that had "something
hoped the Institute would "provide a link too
with its emphasis on periodization. In the cul- be- European about it."49 A Biirgerian tone
tween esthetics and sociology"; in 1975, Paul
tural narrative of architectural theory, then, the pervades this discourse: as a neo-avant-garde,
date 1968 performs what Barthes once called Goldberger reported that the Institute was the argument goes, the I AUS merely rehearsed
"an odd combination of the theoretical and
a "reality effect": it is a realist detail index- the gestures of the prewar avant-gardes in an
the pragmatic"; by the late 1970s, a brochure
ing an historical veracity.41 Ironically, this ef- institutional setting that voided these gestures
fect has been consistent with what manydescribedof the I AUS as a "halfway house ofbe-
any political efficacy.50 But this focus on
the protagonists recall "really happened" tweenin the transfer
school and office."46 As early as 1968, a of European models, the connec-
1968- namely, that theory was born from a
grant tion to MoMA, and the architectural debates
proposal promoted the Institute's servic-
between Whites and Greys has arguably ob-
es by vaunting its fluidity between categorical
sharp retreat from reality. In the words of Ber-
nard Tschumi, "After 1968 ... nobody wanted scured the one aspect of the Institute's history
distinctions, such as theory /practice, private/
to call himself an architect anymore." Or, public,
to inside/outside: where the "formalization of intellectual work

quote Stanford Anderson, "widespread con- in America" can be readily detected: its nature
cern over the instrumentalization of architec- The Institute is ideally suited to as a think tank.

ture . . . elicited a significant reaction in search undertake a project attempting to "Theory" is not just what happened to
for an autonomous architecture."42 coordinate theoretical ideas with practicalAmerican architecture after 1968; it is also
Thus we are left with a real and a theo- constraints . . . Equally, the Institute what happened to American politics after 1968.
retical 1968. The first is a massive geopoliti- can coordinate a new organization ofThe proliferation of think tanks, public policy
cal break: it is made of rebellions and assas- resources, acting as an intermediarycenters, and para-academic institutes that began
sinations, wars and elections. The second is a between public and private agencies toin the 1960s and continued into later decades
transatlantic literary event: it is made of -isms demonstrate the potential of such a realmwas a symptom of a broader intellectual turn
and institutes, issues and disciplines. To use for other studies. in the American political scene: the growth of
language native to the discourse at hand: the a "marketplace of ideas" and a shift from doing
real 1968 is "real" in the Lacanian sense, of But the more crucial equation was between the to thinking, from activism to agenda-setting.51
a long-lost traumatic past that returns in the IAUS's "flexibility" and its "influence." The image of an "educated government" had
guise of slippages. The theoretical 1968 is been inaugurated by the Kennedy administra-
"theoretical" in the Althusserian sense, of an It is just the unique status of the Institutetion, which brought to Washington an entire
epistemological re-grounding.43 This image of as a non-profit educational corporationclass of "action intellectuals" emboldened by
1968 as a pivot between real and theoretical which gives it more flexibility than areform agendas and ambitious federal programs .
does not help to explain projects like the public agency or a private consulting But this influx also prompted a conservative

THE REfiL PERSPECTfi 42

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 LUCIA ALLAIS 33

Fig. lü: Diagram or lAUb ¡Structure, 197ö. lAUb Brochure.

revolution among intellectuals, seeking a way out of perpetual

Like the reform
myriad other think tanks, research centers, and policy
and toward the development of long-term theoretical institutes
models. that proliferated
Already in on the North American coasts in the 1970s,
theare
1966, Irving Kristol editorialized that "the intellectuals IAUS
in was a nucleus of experts that brought overlapping networks
American
politics to stay," and warned that "those government into contact and which
departments leveraged their theoretical assets against an increas-
ingly political
have not 'intellectualizeď themselves ... are finding their dispiritingpower
encounter with "reality." Eisenman himself invoked
the think
dwindling."52 For Kristol, father of the neo-conservative tank modelthe
movement, in a 1977 memorandum that gave Institute trustees
errors of the first wave of intellectuals offered "a most useful educa- a vision for "the next ten years":
tional experience,"53 as American politics finally outgrew its "ingrained
Philistinism and anti-intellectualism." "We need the best efforts of the In reflection it is possible to say that what the Institute could
best minds," he wrote, "to make our cities inhabitable, our schools edu- become is a unique cultural institution unlike any other academic
cational, our economy workable." But echoing his famous definition of institution or professional architectural office. The model for such
a cultural institution could be an architectural version of a policy
a neo-conservative as "a liberal that has been mugged by reality," he ar-
gued that these "best minds" would "need to be chastened by some first- group such as the Brookings Institution in Washington, and a think-
hand experience." Indeed, think tanks were sites of notable ideological tank such as the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton.57
fluidity, where political allegiances were settled not by party affiliation
Eisenman located the beginning of this hybridization in 1974, but- as
but by debates over "reality"- a reality that was, behind the veil of much
specialized terminology, overwhelmingly black and urban. Thus, urban the Harlem Plan shows- the IAUS clearly operated as a think tank from
renewal and advocacy planning pervaded policy debates as examplesthe of start. Certainly the Institute's structure can be distinguished from
other forms of architectural collaboration that preceded it, particularly
failed reform: since social and spatial inequities had only grown despite
the "Professionalization of Reform," it was the very idea of reform thatfrom the Conference of Architects for the Study of the Environment
(CASE), which Eisenman had founded in 1965, based loosely on Team
was to be questioned. Reality could serve as evidence of past errors, but,
Ten. While there are many continuities between CASE and the Institute,
as Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote, "in the beginning was the theory."54
Many of the disciplinary debates in 1970s American architecture Eisenman was explicit about launching the IAUS to rectify the "mis-
take" of CASE- namely, that it had not been "a naturally sustaining
echoed this polarization over the value of reality. The IAUS's 1973 con-
ference Architecture Education USA , for instance, found Eisenman andgroup."58 Abandoning the CIAM-inspired conference model, with its
his colleagues united in a defense of intellectual speculation againstdemocratic
a decision-making process, Eisenman opted instead in 1967
for an institute structure, which allowed him to retain greater control,
multivalent call for a return to a sociological real.55 Despite notable ide-
ological differences, Eisenman, Frampton, Anderson, and Emilio Am- tailor collaborations to specific projects, and adapt to changing funding
basz found solidarity in rejecting any architectural framework where conditions.

"theory and form are seen as unreal while practice and function are Consider the bubble diagram with which the IAUS visualized
considered to be super-real."56 Most polemical was Eisenman's sug- its "structure," starting in 1977, around three program clusters: "pub-
lic programs," "education," and "research and development" [Fig. 10].
gestion that "the value of reality" needed to be "neutralized." It was
not education that needed to be reformed, but reality that needed to The
be diagram appeared in a brochure that listed patrons and clients in-
discriminately, but each cluster actually corresponds to a classifiable
educated. And as an experiment in "the education of reality," Eisenman
offered the IAUS. think tank type which tied knowledge production to a particular funding

THE REAL PERSPECTfl 42

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 THE REAL AND THE THEORETICAL

SOURCES OF IAUS FUNDING, 1967-1983

Bank loans

ШКШ Revenue: sales & tuition

■H Private funds: grants & contributions
■H Public funds: contracts & grants

Fiscal Year 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 ' 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 ; 1983
Illustration by author. Fiscal year endá on June 30th of reporting Data as reported in the Annual Report -to the Board of
year, (e.g., "1968" spans from 07/01/67 to 06/30/68) All figures are Trustees, (i)
from documents in the ÍAUS/CCA archives and are subject to Data for two of the sources as.rep'orted in the Annual Report;
further inquiry on discrepancifes beween reported and actual data for one source from aggregate 'reports and accounting sheets, (ii)
income, and to the estimation disclaimers below. H5 Private & revenue data as reported; public data not available:
solid gray is lowest estímate, from partial reports of actual income;
gray outline is.hrgbest estimate, from partial projections, excluding
grants notreceived, both estimates from December 1 973. (iii)

(i) Annual reports for 1968-1971 are in CCA/IAUS/Folder В 1-5; Public sources of funding include: national (HUD, NEA, NEH,
1976 in Folder A2-7; 1978-1980 in Folder A2- 10; 1981 in FolderNIMH) and state and local agencies (UDC, UDG, NYSCA,
A2-11; 1983 in Folder A3- 17. NYSCH). Between 1971 and 1974 this includes payment for
architectural services.
(ii) Data for 1975 & 1977: Revenue and private data from "Report to
Private sources of funding include: foundations, funds, and
the Noble Foundation" (Folder Al -8); Public data calculated from
endowments (such as Bartoš; Van Amerigen; Graham; Sloan; Mary
projections and budgets by program (Folder A 1-2). Data for 1982:
Private and public data from Comparative "Funding Summary" forBiddle Duke; CBS; Noble; Pinewood; HEW; Meitzer; Stanton;
the years 1981-1983 (Folder A3- 17); Revenue calculated fromKaplan); corporate sponsors (including Con Edison; Exxon; AT&T;
"Financial Report to the Board of Trustees" on April 12, 1982
Atlantic Richfield); and individuals and/or their firms (including R.
(Folder A 1-6). Meier; C. Gwathmey; C. Pelli; D. Brody; D. Banker; E. L. Barnes; G.
D. Hines; IM Pei; P. Johnson; J. Gruzen; P. Kennon; P. Rudolph ; P.
(iii) Private and revenue data from the "Report to the Noble Cohen; Roche Dinkeloo; SOM, Swanke Hayden Connell; U.
Foundation" (Folder A 1-8); public estimates from a budgetFranzen; W. Chatham).
worksheet for the year 1973-1974 (Folder A2-7) including report of
actual income for second half of 1973 and estimates for first half of Revenue includes: income from tuition, rents, subscriptions, catalog
1974. sales, lecture tours, advertisements, and interests and dividends.
Bank loans are as reported in Annual Reports.

Fig. 11: Sources of IAUS Funding, 1967-1983.

THE REfìL PERSPECTfi 42

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 LUCIA ALLAIS

combination. A more specific analysis can be made, then, by charting

developers.61 But this polarization also greatly exacerbated the terms of
the yearly funding received by the IAUS against three the NEH "challenge"
funding types: grant, which required that, for every public dollar
public funding and government contracts; private grantsreceived from the federal agency for the "promotion of architecture in
and donations;
and revenue from sales and tuition. [Fig. 11] This chart American culture,"
reveals that the three dollars had to be raised from private sources
IAUS's hybridity was not a static condition, but a dynamic framework
over the next three years.62 The ballooning of private participation after
for adapting to change over time. In this manner, three1978 was incan
phases factbe
created by the more modest public sums received from
usefully outlined in the IAUS's institutional history. the federal agency. This suggests that it was not- or not only- the aes-
Phase 1 : Between 1967 and 1974, the IAUS functioned primarily
thetic formalization of bureaucracy in New York, but the bureaucratiza-
as a government-contract research institution, producingtion of the
urban humanities in Washington, that gave the IAUS its glamorous
projects
and research reports for public clients such as Senator Rockefeller's
corporate gloss, and fueled its shift from "urban" to "urbane."
UDC, President Johnson's HUD, and Mayor Lindsay's Second, UDG. the
The advent of architectural theory occurred not only as an
models are the RAND Corporation and the Urban Institute: emerg-
importation of lofty literary "theories" into a new American institutional
"reality,"
ing from social science research after World War II, these centersbut were
it was also accompanied by the transformation of quantita-
re-oriented from international to domestic issues, often with
tive an urban analysis into a narrative genre of domestic political
social-scientific
discourse.
theme. Phase 2: Starting in 1974, with the publication of Policy journals
Oppositions , and book-length reports became a staple of
policy institutes
the inauguration of an undergraduate program in association with five in the mid-1970s: authored by a few figureheads, bound
between
liberal arts colleges, and the move to a larger office, the IAUS austere
began covers,
to and read by university students, their influence
function as an academic research institute. As such, it was
wasdetermined
in dialogue
not by their readership, but by their attachment to glam-
with international partners, and hosted fellows throughorous political
private scenes- much as Oppositions achieved success not in
grants
from the Graham and Noble Foundations and public support from
spite, but theof the sobriety of its style, which provided a counter-
because
New York Council for the Arts and the National Endowment for the point to the exclusive image the Institute projected in its more popular-
Arts. Relevant comparisons can be made with a number of Institutes izing ventures.63 More to the point, the body of Oppositions texts that
for Advanced Studies, with foreign and domestic academies (the first constitutes one core of American theory must be placed in a continuum
incarnation of the Institute was as the "Manhattan Campus" for Cornell
of literature that sustained the IAUS's hybridity, in theory and in reality.
For example, grant- writing constituted the main theoretical activity of
University), and with university-affiliated architectural centers: MIT's
Center for Advanced Visual Studies and the University of Venice's theIsti-IAUS during its early years, a crucial medium through which Eisen-
tuto Universitario dell'Architettura. Phase 3 : In 1978, with the launch
man and his colleagues tentatively worked out theoretical positions that
of the newspaper Skyline and of the Oppositions Books series, thewere
in- later posited as authoritative programs in the architectural press.
tensification of exhibitions, and the overhaul of public programs under That grant proposals were important instruments for clarifying
the title "Open Plan," the IAUS became a veritable cultural center,theoretical
re- models and distilling an authorial voice is evidenced by two
consecutive drafts of an opening statement, composed by Eisenman in
nowned internationally as a gateway for foreign visitors and frequented
1971, to describe the "Rationale" of a Program in Generative Design
locally by a successful class of East Coast architects. This final shift was
triggered by a "challenge grant" from the National Endowment forsubmitted the to the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation:
Humanities (NEH) for "the promotion of Architecture in American Cul-
ture."59 These three phases animate the IAUS's bubble diagram in time: First, I am an architect, not a theoretician or a historian. I believe
"research" preceded "education," and both were followed by "public in the inseparability of ideas and form.
programs." To borrow terms provided by the Brookings Institution, the
IAUS went, cumulatively, from "Contract Research Organization," to First, as an architect and a theoretician, I believe in the
"University Without Students," to "Advocacy Tank."60 inseparability of ideas and form.64
The point of describing the IAUS in this manner is not to diminish
the discursive innovations that took place between its walls, or to sug-
Here, in a banal grant- writing exercise, in this simple transformation of
two sentences into one, lies Eisenman's inaugural definition of an archi-
gest that its ability to bridge across discourses, disciplines, ideologies,
tectural "theoretician": someone who "believes in the inseparability of
continents, and practices was dictated by economic pressures. On the
contrary, the immense discursive effort that was devoted to creating ideas
and and forms." This Program borrowed its "generative" designation
from Noam Chomsky's "generative grammar" and was perfected as a
sustaining these hybridities can itself be considered, historiographically,
submittal to a variety of private and public organizations between 1970
as integral to the particular institutional solution that the Institute pro-
and 1975, eventually becoming a collaboration between Eisenman,
vided as a way out of a disciplinary stalemate. Certainly the ideological
Agrest, Mario Gandelsonas, and Duarte Cabral de Mello. The origi-
diversity that reigned at the IAUS during its most stable "educational"
nal research program was the "preparation of theoretical studies for the
years correlates with a diversity of institutional engagements and may
adaptation of structuralism to architecture and urban studies," but by
not have been sustainable in a more monolithic "conference" arrange-
ment. Two further historiographie insights can be drawn here. the time the last grant proposals were made in 1974, this structuralist
agenda had combined with the formalist mission of the "theoretician,"
First, the rise of theory in American architecture marked an inter-
nal shift in disciplinary politics, but it also registered an external shiftculminating
in in a search for "a theory of architectural form."65 A graphic
analysis of this transformation from fundraising rhetoric into bona fide
the politics of disciplines. Consider the closing of the Institute in 1984.
By the 1980s the Institute's dual commitment to intellectual reflectionarchitectural theory concludes this article, providing a case-study of
and to private patronage became increasingly difficult to sustain, h$w
as the real-theoretical divide was written into the IAUS's discourse
before it was formalized as "theory."
evidenced by two radically different events planned for the year 1982:
the symposium Architecture Criticism Ideology , organized by the group Three kinds of diagrams appear in the Generative Design propos-
Revisions to re-calibrate the Institute's intellectual mission from Ta- als. The earliest are organizational charts that illustrate the search for a "a
furi's damning critique, and the conference Architecture, Developmenttwo-state
, system of architecture" by making a distinction between "real
and the New Investment Patterns , organized by the Institute's fundrais-
form" and its "underlying structure" and propagating this distinction with
a number of labels (Deep/Structural, Urban/Building, Cultural/Universal,
ing arm to elicit the corporate patronage of architects, contractors, and

THE REfiL PERSPECTfi 42

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 THE REAL AND THE THEORETICAL

What kinds of diagrams are these? Certainly

WORKUP MODEL they can be seen as a response to the intricate
diagram made by Charles Jencks in 1968 to
STATE 1 (SI): STATE 2 (Sa) : describe a "sign situation" between a human
head and table with feet [Fig. 15]. 72 Against
Jencks 's communicative theory of language,
where the sign was "at least eight times re-
moved from the thing itself," the IAUS dia-
grams resort to a combination of formalist
and structuralist diagramming conventions.
They are not exactly formalist- like Rubin's
vase of Gestalt psychology, with its oscil-
- "ZZI
TUïrt гч I I i mr» a %
lation between figure and ground [Fig. 16].
Nor are they strictly structuralist: they do not
follow the Saussurean convention, where the
relational component of language is rendered
as literal lines between profiled figures [Fig.
Fig. 12: Peter Eisenman, Diagram for a "Two-State System of Architecture" c. 1971. 17]. In contrast to both of these models, the
Generative Design diagrams externalize form
Empirical/Normative) [Fig. 12].66 Thisthat became the trademarks of Eisenman 's
"two- as a third element, which emits and receives
its
cardboard architecture: columns, walls, and
state" hypothesis was clearly part of a broader pi-own relations. In part, this is done to give
search, common to Institute theorists, lotis form to concrete architectural elements like
for aon a grid, along with an interior perspec-
tive, to
theoretically consistent set of binomial terms doors. But these doors differ significantly from
all drawn directly from Eisenman's House
IV.70
explain architectural knowledge, in contrast another usage of doors as a cultural referent:
toThese presented form as a fait accompli.
Butand
scientific models that proliferated variables Jacques
the team also composed another kind of Lacan's gendered diagram of two
diagram
data.67 But the more important distinction was bathroom
which proposed an entirely new ar- doors, which he intended to replace
between the diagram and reality itself: chitectural
"these epistemology, by describingSaussure's
how diagram of a tree as a sign [Fig.
classifications," the proposal specified, "should 18]. Lacan's doors combined structuralist arbi-
form arises from a six-step encounter between
axonometric shapes and a hollowed-out trariness
be considered only as divisions in the theoreti- sub- and cultural determination in a single
ject re-
cal model, not in the empirical reality." This [Figs. 14a-d]. The first step gives a model
discursive frame.73 By contrast, the Generative
Design diagrams feature doors, subjects, lines,
of functionalism: a straightforward encounter
jection of "empirical reality" was made explicit
when a version of the diagram was published and forms, but no "constructed subjectivity."
between a shape (a door) and a user (a head).
The second step uncovers the weakness inA that
as a 2x3 matrix in Casabella [Fig. 13]. Here, different operation is at play: two elements
Eisenman borrowed Chomsky's model of model,
lan- using scale (large and small doors) aretocarefully detached, creating an opportu-
guage but reduced its tripartite division show(se-that shapes are relative to context nity
(twofor a third to appear. The key to under-
standing these diagrams is to see them as two
boxes). The third diagram situates this insight
mantic/syntactic/pragmatic) to two, explaining
in time: since the user has seen many doors,
that "pragmatics can be set aside for a moment" separate gestures: the first reduces the world
because technology rendered "pragmatic large
limi- and small, he has internalized, perhaps
to a binomial theoretical unit, just as the "two-
state model" had done. The second introduces
idealized, the category in his mind. The fourth
tations" moot. Left with only one axis (syntac-
tic-semantic), Eisenman then added a second
diagram introduces the category of form form
(theas a mediator. In this manner, the tension
circle),
(conceptual-perceptual) by explaining that "the which acts as a storage device for between
cu- "the inseparability of ideas and
mulative memories of relative forms. The last
object in architecture" had certain perceptual forms" and the search for a "two-state model of

attributes.68 In other words, having removed architecture" is alleviated, and "form" or "the-
two diagrams grant the user an interlocutor (the
architect) and repeat these operations with twoory" arises opportunistically between them.
pragmatic reality, Eisenman added a perceptive
medium-specificity. Structuralism was heads,
just amaking form into a shared code that me- These diagrams reproduce the institu-
means towards a formalist end. diates between people, shapes, and context.71 tional creation of the IAUS's "independence"
The second kind of diagram was intro-
duced in 1973, after the National Institute of
Mental Health awarded the IAUS a partial
grant but identified "four areas of weakness"
in the proposal:

conceptual semantic syntactic

1 . over reliance on linguistic
terminology
2. no explicit methodology
3 . no model which was directly related
to architecture
perceptual semantic syntactic
4. lack of definition of data.69

In response to this critique, the IAUS team

produced an entirely new proposal, which
included the kind of axonometric diagramsFig. 13: Peter Eisenman, Adaptation of the Chomskian model to architecture, 1972.

THE REAL PERSPECTfi 42

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 LUCIA ALLAIS

function shape

built "environment

built environment

Figs. 14a-d: IAUS, Diagrams from Generative Design Proposal , 1973.

THE REAL PERSPECTA 42

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 THE REAL AND THE THEORETICAL 38
Fig. 15: Charles Jencks, "The sign situation," 1968.
Fig. 16: Edgar Rubin, Vase Gestalt
Diagram, 1915.
Fig. 17: Ferdinand de Saussure, Diagram
from Structural Linguistics, 1913.
Fig. 18: Jacques Lacan, Diagrams from
Écrits, 1966.
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at the scale of form itself. As a final com- paradoxically from the considerable effort that
parison shows, the same structure underlies
was devoted to institutionalizing formalism in
the 1968 Harlem Plan, the IAUS's bubble American architecture. Far from a return of the
diagram, and the Generative Design sequence real, these practices embody the reappearance
of architecture's pragmatic dimension, which
[Figs. 1, 10, and 14]: two elements, presumed
was "set aside, for a moment," circa 1968.
to be separated, are bridged by a third, seem-
ingly autonomous one. Where Generative
Design placed "form" and the I AUS located
"theory," in Harlem it was architectural prac-
tice itself that was introduced. What these X In researching and writing this article,
I have accrued three separate debts:
three cases have in common is that the mediat-
to Darei 1 W. Fields, who long ago
ing term is unrelated to the first two. These are pointed out the whitening of 1968 in
American histories of architectural
not dialectical resolutions; they are opportu-
theory; to Beatriz Colomina, who
nistic apparitions. originally suggested I visit the IAUS
To return to the historiographie intrigue archives while I was in residence
as an MIT- CCA doctoral fellow at the
of what "really happened" in 1968: what has
Study Center of the Canadian Center
been taken as a dialectical replacement of the for Architecture in June 2007; and
"real" with the "theoretical" was in fact ef- to Peter Eisenman, Stanford Anderson,
and Mario Gande lsonas, who kindly
fected as two separate gestures- a pointed
shared their recollections with me,
dismissal of certain empiricist claims to real- respectively, in New York (7 Oct
ity, and a proposal for a cultural valuation of 2008), Cambridge (4 Oct 2008), and
Princeton (6 Oct 2008). I also wish to
theoretical practice instead. While the IAUS's
thank Alexis Sornin, Renata Guttman,
hybridity did not survive Reaganomics, the Anne -Marie Sigouin, and Natalie Roy
space that was thereby opened for "theory," at the CCA, Steven G. Fullwood at the
"form," and "architectural culture" continues Schomburg Center for Research in Black
Culture, as well as Kim Foerster, who
to be occupied by intellectual speculation and graciously helped me fill some archival
avant-garde practice in American architecture lacunae. I am also grateful to Eduardo
Canedo for helping me navigate the
today. Indeed, with a few small changes, the
literature on post- 1968 American
alternate institute described by the 1968 Har- political culture. A version of this
lem Plan diagram remains plausible: a blue- paper was presented on 1 1 April 2009
with the title "Did Theory Really
print for a post-mythical practice- centered
Happen?" at the conference A Matter of
on the modalities of architectural design- that Opinion organized by John McMorrough
opportunistically recuperates modernist myths at the Ohio State University. Portions
of this article were researched while
as they fall from disciplinary graces. Many
composing an entry on the IAUS for
contemporary architectural practices that stake the Dictionary of Twentieth Century
a realist claim- under the sign of research, ac- Architecture, edited by Marco Biraghi
tivism, materialism, or technology- propose and Alberto Ferlenga, to be published
by Einaudi.
to bridge, as the Harlem Plan did, between a
1. Draft proposal for a Block study of
bankrupt myth of the city and a disenfranchised a prototypical future Harlem." CCA
Archives, Fonds Peter Eisenman- IAUS
constituency. The myths have simply become
(henceforth: CCA/IAUS), Folder B2-2.
more cosmopolitan, the constituencies more 2. Ibid.
dispersed. These realist practices still benefit
3. Ibid.
THE REAL PERSPECTA 42
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 LUCIA
4. This fourfold is borrowed from the four
essayists of the recent Re- tracing
Eisenman : Complete Works (New York:
Rizzoli, 2006). Stan Allen describes
the search for "conceptual density" in
"Trace Elements" (50); Sarah Whiting,
the turn away from "user- friendliness"
in "Euphoric Ratio" (98); Greg Lynn,
the drive to "achieve a fictional
ideal of Protestant whiteness" in
"The Talented Mr. Tracer" (179); and
Guido Zuliani "that elusive entity
that would be a self -referential
architecture" in "Aspects of the
Modern," (346).
5. Timothy Hyde, "Peter Eisenman's Alibi,"
Harvard Design Magazine (Spring /
Sumner 2008): 109-113. See also
John McMorrough, "Erudition of the
Architect," Constructs (Fall 2008):
17.
6. Eisenman alternatively proposed an
"educational mechanism" and a building
project. The final proposal was "that
a model block study prototypical of
future Harlem be incorporated as
part of the program of the NYUL." The
instrumentalizai ion of the "Black
Student" is described clearly as a
give-and-take. "Give: pay, certificate,
teach him research technique, help him
help Harlem in the long run. Return:
explain Black Problems, research." See
"Outline," Meeting minutes, 25 July
1968. CCA/IAUS/B2-3.
7. Peter Lemos, "The Triumph of the
Quill," Village Voice, May 3, 1983.
Also useful for the history of
the Institute are Robert Stern's
"Architectural Culture: Discourse," in
New York 1960 (New York: Monacelli,
1995), 1205-1211; Joan Ockman,
"Resurrecting the Avant -Garde: the
History and Program of Oppositions"
in Archi tectureproduction (New York:
Princeton Architectural Press, 1988);
and Suzanne Frank, "Institute for
Architecture and Urban Studies,"
in Encyclopedia of 20th Century
Architecture , ed. R. Stephen Sennott
(New York: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2006),
677-678. More complete studies of the
IAUS's history are forthcoming: see
Kim Foerster, "Alternative Educational
Programs in Architecture" in
Explorations in Architecture (Berne:
Birkhauser, 2008), 26-28; and Sylvia
Lavin, "IAUS," in Log 13/14: 53-56.
8. On the early history of the League,
see Nancy Weiss, The National Urban
League, 1910-1940 (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1974) and John Louis
Recchiuti, "Nordic Myth to NAACP and
Urban League," in Civic Engagement
(Philadelphia: U Penn Press, 2007). A
longer history is in Jesse T. Moore,
A Search for Equality: the National
Urban League, 1910-1961 (University
Park: Penn State University Press,
1981). For later years, see Arthur
Ellis, The Black Power Brokers
(California: Century Twenty-One
Publishing, 1980) and Noel Cazenave,
Impossible Democracy (New York: SUNY,
2007). Speaking of the mid-1960s,
Cazenave describes the League as "a
very middle -class, mainstream, and
traditional African American social -
work oriented organization that was
seeking a way to both establish its
relevancy and legitimacy among low-
income, inner- city African Americans
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ALLAIS 39
and to become a major recipient of War
on Poverty program funds." Impossible
Democracy, 159.
9. "We Have a New Symbol / New Programs
Planned" in Urban League Newsletter,
March-April 1968. See Schomburg
Center for Research in Black Culture,
Records of the New York Urban League,
Secretary of the Board of Directors
(hence forth NYUL) Box 5 / Folder 25.
10. Nina Mjagkij, "HARYOU" in Organizing
Black America (New York: Taylor &
Francis, 2001), 259. HARYOU's Project
Uplift, for instance, was designed to
"cool" the city over the summer of
1966, though its sponsorship of the
radical Black Art Theater provoked
some controversy and eventually led
to Wingate's departure. See Impossible
Democracy , 158-162, and "Project Up-
Lift to 'Cool' Harlem: Catalyst for
Haryou Administration Crisis," New
York Times, June 5 1966. Haryou -ACT
and Powell both appear throughout
Eisenman's meeting notes. But the only
architectural recipient of Haryou-ACT
funds in 1968 was Richard Hatch, a
"street -corner architect" who was also
the most vocal critic of MoMA's 1967
New City show (see note 23).
11. Eisenman described the agreement
informally: "The League can get a
grant-then subcontract to us for Plan
and for Education." The budget was
$28,745 per year. Draft budget for
Harlem School, IAUS/CCA/B2-3.
12. Letter from Wingate to Eisenman,
August 5, 1968. IAUS/CCA/B2-2. The
connection between the Institute and
the League was made through Catherine
Hemenway of the National Urban League
in March 1968. Eisenman wrote to her
periodically through the spring of
1968; a meeting was arranged with
Wingate on 23 July, which led to a day-
long seminar involving Eisenman and
five other "intellectuals." Letter from
Eisenman to Hemenway, March 4, 1968.
13. Modi Es soka, "Program Plan for 'Black
Leadership Institute': Disadvantaged
Youth and Academicians," 10. IAUS/CCA/
B2-3
14. Designated as an "Architectural
Planner," Eisenman was to teach
"how physical form affects social
patterns." Meeting minutes, 25 July
1968, IAUS/CCA/B2-3.
15. On the Brownsville experiment, see
Jerald Podair, The Strike that Changed
New York: Blacks, Whites, and the
Ocean Hill -Brownsville Crisis (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 2002).
The incident began in May 1968 and
continued into the fall. The NYUL
took out a full -page ad, "Why the
New York Urban League backs the Ocean
Hill -Brownsville governing board
without reservation" in the New York
Times, October 11, 1968. A press
release announcing the National Urban
League's "most emphatic support for
decentralization" is the last dated
document in the Wingate -Eisenman
correspondence in the IAUS archives.
NUL Press Release 68-134, 19 September
1968.
16. Wingate was quoted as saying that
Harlem needed "its own school system,
police force, and other institutions
it could control." "Wingate Endorses
Separate Schools," New York Times,
October 7, 1968.
THE REAL PERSPECTR 42
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17. The proposal was to collaborate with
the NAACP 's director of program
development, George Broadfield, who
Eisenman met on 29 July 1968. Eisenman
sent him a proposal on 12 August 1968.
IAUS/CCA/B2-4
18. The New York State Building was featured
on the cover of the NYUL student
newspaper as a Trojan horse with the
headline "The State Building: A Greek
Gift?" Forty Acres and a Mule, April
1968. Relations between the UDC and
Harlem groups did not stabilize until
a "Memorandum of Understanding" was
drafted on 15 May 1960. For a detailed
history of the UDC, see Eleanor L.
Brilliant, The Urban Development
Corporation: Private Interests and
Public Authority (Lexington: Lexington
Books, 1975). See also Peter Siskind,
"'Rockefeller's Vietnam?': Black
Politics and Urban Development in
Harlem, 1969-1974," Conference on New
York City History, Gotham Center for
New York City History (October 5-7,
2001), http://www.gothamcenter.org/
festival/2001 /papers, shtml.
19. The following comment is recorded in
notes from a meeting on 12 September
1968, attended by Eisenman and an
unnamed Institute colleague: "Wingate
can provide the kids now. Wingate
wants to involve Columbia & make it a
big thing. Be careful! " Meeting notes,
12 September 1968, CCA/IAUS/B2-3.
20. Kenneth Frampton, Stan Allen, and Hal
Foster, "A Conversation with Kenneth
Frampton," in October 106 (Autumn
2003): 45.
21. Arthur Drexler, "Architecture and
Urban Renewal," and Sidney Frigand, "A
Perspective on Planning," in The New
City: Architecture and Urban Renewal
(New York: Museum of Modern Art,
1967).
22. Richard Hatch, "The Museum of Modern
Art Discovers Harlem," Architectural
Forum (March 1967): 39-47.
23. In the 1968 Harlem Plan, Eisenman
heralded "the acceptance of community
participation in community planning
and development," in an implied
critique of the 1967 New City show.
Draft Proposal, CCA/IAUS/B2-3.
24. In June 1968, the NYUL student
newspaper, Forty Acres and a Mule
reported that black students
protesting at Columbia made two
demands: "a) an African history
course in the curriculum, b) black
professors at Columbia as part of the
faculty." Leroy Robinson, "Disorder at
Columbia," 40 Acres and a Mule (June
1968): 9. On the impact of protests in
the creation of academic departments,
see Fabio Rojas, From Black Power
to Black Studies (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 2007).
25. "Ghettos are the consequence of the
imposition of external power and the
institutionalization of powerlessness.
In this respect, they are in fact
social, political, educational, and-
above all-economic colonies." Kenneth
B. Clark, Youth in the Ghetto: A Study
of the Consequences of Powerlessness
and Blueprint for Change (New York:
HARYOU, 1964), 11. See also Kenneth B.
Clark, Dark Ghetto: Dilemmas of Social
Power (New York: Harper & Row, 1967).
26. The so-called "doll test" dated to
the 1940s and culminated in the
 THE REAL AND THE THEORETICAL 40
publication of Clark's 1955 Prejudice and Your Child (Boston:
Beacon Press, 1955). On Clark's legacy as the author of the
first social-scientific footnote in a Supreme Court decision,
see Gina Philogène, ed., Racial identity in context the
legacy of Kenneth B. Clark (Washington, DC: APA, 2004). On
Clark's resignation from HARYOU see Remini scences of Kenneth
B. Clark (1976), 166-191, in the Oral History Research Office
Collection of the Columbia University Libraries (OHRO/
CUL) and Charles V. Hamilton, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.:
The Political Biography of an American Dilemma (New York:
Atheneum, 1991).
27. For an explicit program of black literary formalism, see
Henry Louis Gates's The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of Afro-
American Literary Cri ti ci sm (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1988) and Darell Fields's Architecture in Black
(New Brunswick: Athlone Press, 1991), which adapts this
"signifying" model into architectural discourse. See also
Fields's journal Appendix (later Appx) . For a pragmatist lens
turned towards architecture, see Cornel West, "A Note on Race
and Architecture," Keeping Faith (New York: Routledge, 1993),
45-54, which detects in the work of Eisenman, Anthony Vidier,
and Mark Wigley an "awakening of architectural criticism to
the depths of our cultural crisis." The Eisenman West refers
to is the late Derridian "skeptic." It goes without saying
that the 1968 Harlem Plan belongs in a different discursive
register, whether in a pragmatist or formalist mode.
28. Edward J. Logue and Arthur Drexler, "Introduction," Another
Chance for Housing: Low-Rise Al ternatives (New York: MoMA,
1973), 5. Logue also described a meeting of the "fresh
perspective of the Institute" with the "very real world in
which we [the UDC] must operate."
29. "The shift from ideal to real proved bumpy," wrote Suzanne
Stephens in "Compromised Ideal," Progressive Architecture
(October 1979): 50-53. Even a sympathetic review described
the architecture as "Corbu, 1925." "MOMA on Housing: Nothing
New," Architecture Plus (August 1973): 15. See also Joseph
Fried, "Low-Rise Development Project Begun in Brownsville by
UDC," New York Times, June 12, 1973.
30. "The theory of modern architecture," wrote Colin Rowe, was
"little more than a constellation of myths." Colin Rowe,
introduction to Five Architects (New York: Wittenborn, 1972),
6.
31. Diana Agrest, "On the Notion of Place," in Architecture
from Without: Theoretical Framings for a Critical Practice
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991), 7.
32. The project was to be a part of HUD's Model Cities program;
it was never realized, but its associated volume, On
Streets, represents the Institute's discourse at its most
interdisciplinary- a multi -pronged assault on spatial
determinism and a direct affront to the empiricism that had
come to dominate urban research, coordinated by Stanford
Anderson. Stanford Anderson, ed. , On Streets (Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press, 1978).
33. These included IBM, Time-Life, Pan-Am, Chase, McGraw-
Hill, American Airlines, American Express, Union Carbide,
Burlington Mills, and Sinclair Oil. See List of Street
academy sponsors, NYUL/Box 7 /Folder 35. Eisenman and Wingate
hoped to combine this privately- funded Street Academy setup
with HUD's Model Cities- the same program under which the
"Streets" project unfolded.
34. The individual genius is no longer a reality; corporate
responsibility and accountability are a new order." Modi
Essoka, "Program Plan for 'Black Leadership Institute'," IAUS/
CCA/B2-2
35. Patterns in public and private support for "the arts"
(including architecture) in relation to other fields
(including "urban" projects) are chronicled in Paul DiMaggio,
Nonprofit Enterpri se in the Arts: Studies in Mission and
Constraint (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986).
36. "UL Granted $200,000 by Rockefeller Foundation," The Call and
Post, October 5, 1968, 7B.
37. K. Michael Hays, introduction to Architecture Theory since
1968 (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1998), xii.
38. Joan Ockman, ed., Architecture Culture 1943-1968 (New York:
Rizzoli, 1993) and Joan Ockman, "Talking with Bernard
Tschumi," Log 13/14 Aftershocks: Generation( s ) since 1968
(Fall 2008): 159-170.
39. Frederic Jameson, "Periodizing the 60s," Social Text 9/10:
The 60 's without Apology (Spring/ Summer, 1984): 178-209.
The passage cited by Ockman is: "Althusser's proposal seems
the wisest in this situation: as old-fashioned narrative, or
'realistic' historiography became problematic, the historian
THE REfiL PERSPECTfi 42
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should reformulate her vocation- not any longer to produce
some vivid representation of History 'as it really happened,'
but rather to produce the concept of that history." The
one cited by Hays is "it does not seem not particularly
controversial to mark the beginnings of what will come to be
called the 60s in the Third World, with the great movement
of decolonization in British and French Africa." See also
Jameson's The Political Unsconscious (Ithaca: Cornell,
1981) where he first returns to Althusser. Althusser's actual
adversaries were so-called realist Marxist historians, notably
E. P. Thompson. See Thompson, The Poverty of Theory (London:
Merlin, 1978) and Perry Anderson, Arguments Within English
Marxism (London: Verso, 1980).
40. The phrase is from Ránke's 1824 History of the Latin and
Teutonic Peoples from 1494 to 1514. On Ranke, see most
succinctly Anthony Grafton, The Footnote (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1997); most canonically, Hayden White,
Met ahi story (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
1973); and for its impact on America, Peter Novick, That
Noble Dream (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
41. Roland Barthes, "L'effet du Réel," in Oeuvres completes, Tome
II: 1966-1973 (Paris: Seuil, 1994), translated as "The
Reality Effect," in French Literary Theory Today (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1982). Barthes summarizes:
"Eliminated from the realist utterance as a signified of
denotation, the 'real' slips back in as a signified of
connotation; for at the very moment when these details
are supposed to denote reality directly, all that they do,
tacitly, is to signify it."
42. Bernard Tschumi, "Talking with Bernard Tschumi" Op Cit.
Stanford Anderson, "Quasi -Autonomy in Architecture: The Search
for an In-Between," Perspecta 33: Mining Autonomy (2002): 31.
43. It has become commonplace to say that Althusser's Pour Marx
(Paris: Maspéro, 1965) performed on the work of Marx the same
critical reading as Lacan's Ecrits (Paris: Seuil, 1966) did
on the work of Freud.
44. Sylvia Lavin has noted that "1968 is commonly understood as an
assault on institutional authority, but the period's impact
on architecture cannot be understood without recognizing
the most surprising, aberrant, yet pervasively significant
institution-building that occurred" around the IAUS. Sylvia
Lavin, "IAUS," 53. Michael Hays has suggested that theory
"subsumed architectural culture," while Ockman argues that
"the inflation of theory compensated for a political discourse
that was no longer sustainable." Hays, Op. Cit. ; Ockman,
"Talking With Bernard Tschumi." Further musings on the
millennial end/ s of theory, including a disagreement between
Ockman and Hays, are collected in Assemblage 41. See also
Hays's edited The Oppositions Reader (New York: Princeton
Architectural Press, 2000) and Sylvia Lavin, "Theory into
History: or, The Will to Anthology" in JSAH (September 1999):
194-196.
45. Paul Veyne, Comment on écrit l 'histoire (Paris: Seuil, 1978).
46. Ada Louise Huxtable, New York Times, January 24, 1967; Paul
Goldberger, "Midtown Architecture Institute Flowering as a
Student Mecca," New York Times, October 30, 1975, 41.
47. This paragraph was most likely composed by Peter Eisenman in
late 1968. A research proposal to develop a rational approach
to urban design through the study of the street. IAUS/CCA/
D4-1, 2.
48. See respectively: Mary McLeod, "Architecture and Politics in
the Reagan Era," Assemblage 8 (February 1989): 53; George
Baird, "A Reflection on the End òf Assemblage," Assemblage
41: 11 ("The cultural project of the institute ... had to be
seen as falling decisively within the problematic realm
of what Horkheimer and Adorno so insightfully name the
"culture industry."); and Jean Louis Cohen, "Architecture
Intellectualized: 1970-1990," Casabella 586-587 (Jan-
Feb 1992): 125. The analogy between the IAUS and the
International Style is supported by the IAUS's association
with the MoMA, with Philip Johnson, and by the Corbusian
purism of Eisenman's cardboard architecture.
49. Taf uri mapped the real - theoretical divide neatly onto the
Whites v. Greys debate, with Venturi as the keeper of "the
institution of the real." Manfredo Tafuri, "The Ashes of
Jefferson," in The Sphere and the Labyrinth, trans. Pellegrino
d'Acierno and Robert Connolly (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
1987), 291-303.
50. Peter Bürger, The Theory of the Avant -Garde (Minneapolis: UM
Press, 1984). A useful corrective about the reception of
Tafuri 's work in US architectural theory is provided by Diane
Ghirardo, in "Manfredo Tafuri and Architecture Theory in the
 LUCIA ALL AIS
US," Perspecta 33: Mining Autonomy (2002): 38-47.
51. Historians have begun to construct a mult i -faceted history
of this phenomenon, making distinctions between national
trends, tracing the migrations of international models,
noting connections to social -scientific research methods,
and establishing ties to the rise and fall of political
regimes. The major work of reference is James Allen Smith,
The Idea Brokers: Think Tanks and the Rise of the New Policy
Elite (New York: MacMillan, 1991). See also Diane Stone and
Andrew Denham, Think Tank Traditions (Manchester: Manchester
University Press, 2004); David M. Ricci, The Transformation
of American Politics (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1993); and Murray Weidenmbaum, The Competition of Ideas (New
Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2009).
52. Irving Kristol, "The Troublesome Intellectual," The Public
Interest, No. 2 (Winter 1966): 3-6.
53. Ibid.
54. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, "The Professionalizat ion of Reform,"
Public Interest, No. 1 (Fall 1965): 6. In the inaugural
editorial, Irving Kristol and Daniel Bell wrote that "it is
the nature of ideology to preconceive reality ; and it is
exactly such preconceptions that are the worst hindrances to
knowing -what -one- is - talking -about ." Irving Kristol and Daniel
Bell, "What is the Public Interest?" Public Interest 1 (Fall
1965): 5.
55. Denise Scott Brown indicted planners for being obsessed with
"analysis"; Robert Gutman warned that architecture schools
would close for irrelevance; and Jonathan Barett called for
the professionalization of education. Architecture Education
USA: A Conference to Explore Current Alternatives (November
13, 1973; Typescript: MIT Rotch Library). Gutman constitutes
the ideological swing figure, as he was an early participant
in Institute projects.
56. Kenneth Frampton detailed the "specialization of education,"
in a "depoliticized society" in "Polemical Notes on
Architectural Educatioij"; Stanford Anderson prefaced his
paper "The Ineffectiveness of Architectural Education" which
suggested that "architecture school should be built around
internal institutes or seminars" by making a call to arms
against "Phase 2 of Nixonomics"; and Eisenman pointed out
the irony that the "crisis view of the world" was normative,
but held by "people who are pragmatic and inductive," while
the view of "change as piecemeal and difficult" was often held
by people "whose thinking was deductive and speculative."
Peter Eisenman, "The Education of Reality," 3-4 Architecture
Education USA, unpaginated.
57. Peter Eisenman, "Definition of the Institute: the Next Ten
Years." Memorandum to members of the board of trustees,
Meeting of the Board of Trustees, 11 January 1977. CCA/IAUS/
Al - 3 .
58. "The Institute represents an attempt to resolve some of the
bigger mistakes I have made in my past," he wrote in January
1968. "I think CASE is one of those mistakes." Eisenman found
"a talking group like CASE a pleasant social amenity... For a
long time I have considered CASE a rather ugly child, ill-
formed and without direction. ... I think such groups can only
exist in a rather organic way." Letter from Eisenman to Thomas
Vreeland, January 9, 1968. CCA/IAUS/B1 -2.
59. The Institute had long received from New York State Council
for the Arts some funds under the "New York State's Aid to
Cultural Organizations." CCA/IAUS /A3 - 13. But the NEH offered
support on a decidedly different scale.
60. Kent Weaver, "The Changing World of Think Tanks," Political
Science and Politics (Sept 1989): 563-578.
61. The Revisions Group organized a series of events in the
spring of 1981 and a symposium on 13 March 1982, culminating
in the publication of the volume Architecture, Cri ti ci sm,
Ideology, ed. Joan Ockman (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
Architectural Press, 1985). On the Development Conference
see "Architecture Development and the New Investment Pattern:
Can the two co- exi st? " Revision to the Architecture and
Investment Conference, September 25, 1981. CCA/IAUS/A5-
11. A "Development Subcommit tee" was created in 1977, led
by Charles Gwathmey. One of its earliest efforts was the
circulation of a solicitation letter signed jointly by Ed
Logue, Philip Johnson, and Charles Gwathmey. CCA/IAUS/A2- 10
62. The first NEH grant was given in 1978 to fund Open Plan.
The Challenge Grant was granted in 1980. As reported in a
Development Workbook dated November 1980, "We must raise $3
for [sic] private sources for every $1 provided by the Grant."
CCA/IAUS /А2- 10
63. On policy journals see Smith, "The Marketplace for Ideas,"
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41
in Idea Brokers, 193. On Oppositions see K. Michael Hays's
introduction to The Opposi tions Reader, Joan Ockman, "The
Program of Oppositions," Op. Ci t., Vincent P. Pecora, "Towers
of Babel," in Diane Ghirardo, Out of Site: A Social Criticism
of Architecture (Seattle: Bay Press, 1991) and Mitchell
Schwartzer, "History and Theory in Architecture Periodicals:
Assembling Oppositions," JSAH 58/3 (September 1999): 342-349.
64. Peter Eisenman, "Rationale," in "Draft of the grant application
to the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation describing the Program in
Generative Design," (undated) CCA/IAUS/ D4-3
65. Cited in the description of a Van Amerigen Foundation Grant in
The Foundation Grants Index (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1973), Grant #6363.
66. "The first state is concerned with the explicit or real
architectural form as it is manifested in the built
environment. The second state includes the non-explicit,
or underlying structure of architectural form." See "Draft
of the grant application to the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
describing the Program in Generative Design," CCA/IAUS/ D4-3
67. This search is at work in the three famous Oppositions
editorials where each founding editor proposed a course
of action by identifying the relevant "dialectic."
Notwithstanding their oft -noted "oppositional" conceit,
these editorials were themselves nested in a dialectical
sequence. Frampton, "On Reading Heidegger"; Gandelsonas,
"Neo-functionalism"; Eisenman, "Post -Functional ism," in The
Oppositions Reader, Op. Cit., 4,8,12.
68. "Pragmatics can be set aside for a moment because modern
technology has provided architecture with the means for
disassociating pragmatic limitations from semantic or
syntactic concerns." "The object in architecture and art
has perceptual attributes as important as conceptual ones."
Peter Eisenman, "Notes on Conceptual architecture," Casabella
359-360 (1971): 57, 57n. 26. As Eisenman noted, it was
Charles Morris who renamed the third dimension "pragmatics";
Chomsky's "perceptive model" of language used the categories
"syntactic, semantic and phonetic." Noam Chomsky, Language
and Mind (New York: Harcourt, 1968), 116-117.
69. NIMH, "Notice of Grant Awarded." CCA/IAUS/ A2. 6 The original
proposal asked for $99,900 over three years, but the IAUS
received only $37,000 for the period August 1972-August 1973.
This was supplemented by a grant from the Alfred P. Sloane
Foundation. The evaluation was performed during an informal
visiting committee, led by the director of the NIMH's
Center for the Study of Metropolitan Problems, Eliot Liebow.
"Comprehensive Progress Report," in "Program In Generative
Design," Proposal Submitted to the NIMH in 1973. P1040187.
CCA/IAUS/A2. 6.
70. The proposal served as a draft for subsequent texts where
Gandelsonas described architecture as "a language" and
took Eisenman's building as a case -study: "On Reading
Architecture," Progressive Architecture (March 1972) and
"From Structure to Subject, The Formation of an Architectural
Language," Oppositions 17 (Summer 1979). On diagrams in
Eisenman's work, see Eisenman and Somol, Diagram Diaries (New
York: Universe, 1999).
71. The grant, as resubmitted, was not renewed. Letter from Liebow
to Eisenman, June 22 1973. ССА/ IAUS/A2. 6
72. Charles Jencks, "Semiology and Architecture," in Jencks and
Baird, eds. , Meaning and Architecture (New York: Braziller,
1970), 11-24. Gandelsonas and Agrest articulated their
opposition to Jencks's "communicative" model in "Semiotics
and Architecture: Ideological Consumption or Theoretical
Work," Oppositions 1 (Sept 1973).
73. Jacques Lacan, "The Instance of the Letter in the Unconscious,
or Reason Since Freud" in Écrits, trans. Bruce Fink (New
York: Norton, 2002), 139-168. "There may be forms which enter
into the symbiotic model unproblemat ically," wrote Lacan,
"but they ultimately pass through a constructed subjectivity,"
Ibid. The door continued to stand as a preferred example
of an architectural "sign" well into the 1970s. "Since
Alberti, the sign 'door' has been recognized as a distinct
configuration within a larger system of shapes." Gandelsonas,
"From Structure to Object," Oppositions 1: 9.