Architectural Theory Review

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Architecture Between Politics And Aesthetics:

Peter Wilson's “Ambivalent Criticality” at the
Architectural Association in the 1970s

Isabelle Doucet

To cite this article: Isabelle Doucet (2014) Architecture Between Politics And Aesthetics: Peter
Wilson's “Ambivalent Criticality” at the Architectural Association in the 1970s, Architectural Theory
Review, 19:1, 98-115, DOI: 10.1080/13264826.2014.912574

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/13264826.2014.912574

Published online: 16 Jul 2014.

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Architectural Theory Review, 2014
Vol. 19, No. 1, 98–115, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13264826.2014.912574

ISABELLE DOUCET

ARCHITECTURE BETWEEN POLITICS

AND AESTHETICS: Peter Wilson’s
“Ambivalent Criticality” at the Architectural
Association in the 1970s

Through which registers does criticality oper-

ate in architecture and how can its political,
social, and aesthetic concerns be reconciled?
Such questions were at the centre of the post-
1968 crisis of criticality and have resurfaced in
recent debates under the banner of the “post-
critical”. This paper contributes to the
historicising of this debate through the unpack-
ing of Peter Wilson’s The Fire: 2, a 1974 student
project he developed at the Architectural
Association (AA) in London. The Fire: 2 is an
imaginary scenario for a post-disaster London
and comprises of a monumental, enclosed
ensemble of seven 1 km £ 1 km squares con-
nected through the River Thames. Through
Wilson’s project, this article challenges an
overly dismissive evaluation of (all) postmodern
architectural drawings as mere stylistic reverie.
Historically, it contributes to a deeper under-
standing of the convergences and tensions
between politics and aesthetics, and between
disciplinary critique and an engagement
with the world “out there”, at the dawn of

Q 2014 Taylor & Francis

ATR 19:1-14
architectural postmodernism. The Fire: 2 is
particularly instructive since it is not only a
product of the AA, which played a pivotal
role in the formation of the critical discourse
of the 1970s and 1980s, it is also the
product of a student who, immersed in a
politically charged AA, set out to craft his
own architectural voice in both political
and aesthetic terms. In order to access the
resultant ambivalent criticality, I will not
explain the project through unproductive
pairs such as opposition–appeasement, poli-
tics–aesthetics, or withdrawal–engagement.
Instead, I unpack the different registers of
critical engagement that are at work in the
drawings. Because Wilson deploys the draw-
ings as a vehicle for both personal, artistic
expression and critical engagement, The Fire: 2
offers a unique resource for revisiting this
recent history.
Where can criticality in architecture be located:
in theory or practice, discipline or profession?
Through which registers does criticality operate
in architecture? How can architecture’s political,
societal, and aesthetic concerns be reconciled?
Such questions circulated in the post-1968 crisis
of criticality, when architectural criticism nego-
tiated its modern legacy at the intersections of
social critique, politics, and aesthetics. They have
resurfaced in recent architecture theory debates
under the banner of the “post-critical”. In this
article, I will revisit this period through a detailed
analysis of the 1974 student project called The
Fire: 2, by Peter Wilson, when he was a student at
the Architectural Association (AA) in London.
This project has only recently become available
for research through its donation to the AA
Archives in July 2012 by the architect.
I will approach The Fire: 2 as a theorist, not a
historian.1 My encounter with history forms an
PETER WILSON’S “AMBIVALENT CRITICALITY”
act of “digesting”:2 a wrestling with the
drawings and the traces they left behind, a
wrestling with several preconceptions about
the alignment of politics and aesthetics in the
post-1968 politicisation, and the subsequent
de-politicisation. Before taking the reader back
to the AA in the 1970s, I will elaborate on
architecture’s current “crisis of criticality” and
how this informs and justifies a return to the
critical tools used by architects at the dawn of
postmodernism.
Architecture’s Crisis of Criticality
Wilson studied at the AA in a transitional
moment between two waves of intellectual
responses to 1968. By the mid-1970s, the initial
radical politicisation, or what George Baird
called a “first wave”, was replaced with a
growing obsession with the city and its history.3
This “second wave” thrived on the rather
innocent use of history and, known as
“rationalism” in Europe and “contextualism” in
the United States, led architectural
postmodernism.4 The emergence of postmo-
dernism, as coined by Charles Jencks in 1975,
coincided with a growing international “neo-
avant-garde” network evolving around the AA.5
Wilson thus studied at the dawn of post-
modernism, when students struggled to
develop their own voic^es within an intellectual
landscape of political radicalism, technological
innovations, stylistic and morphological fascina-
tions with the (historical) European city, and one
that operated on an increasingly global scale.
Alongside the emergence of postmodernism in
architecture, architectural theory arguably
underwent a crisis of criticality. Critical theory,
which had prevailed from the mid-1960s to the
mid-1990s, was largely conducted through the
(Tafurian) lenses of autonomy and negation.6
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DOUCET
Recently, debates have taken a “post-critical”
turn.7 This can be located in the mid-1990s,
when significant changes took place in
architectural practice, such as a growing
pragmatism (exemplified by the work of
OMA and Dutch architecture more generally),
the mobilisation of iconic architecture (the
“Bilbao-effect”), and the currency of “starchi-
tects” in a global market economy.8 Whilst
architectural theory would grow increasingly
concerned with the critical and ethical
appeasement of such changing practice, its
fatalist inscription in (rather than opposition to)
late-capitalist consumer society meant that it
was subject to scepticism. The post-critical
consequently became associated with a post-
theoretical turn in a wider intellectual context.
Aiming to historicise these current debates
through the study of a 1974 project raises
methodological concerns and Tafurian dilem-
mas related to the problem of “operative
criticism”.9 However, because the AA played a
pivotal role in the formation of the critical
discourse of the 1970s and 1980s, one that was
later assaulted by the post-critical, it offers an
instructive context for both the contempora-
neous and contemporary discussions of
criticality in architecture.10 The central ques-
tion, both then and now, is if, where, and how
architecture can operate critically. This article
contributes to theorising architecture’s critical
agency by unpacking the critical operations in
Wilson’s project in ways that surpass unhelpful
dichotomies such as those between fatalistic
appeasement and radical opposition.
The Counter-Project as a Vehicle for
Criticality
Unbuilt projects and drawings produced as
“counter-projects” are a useful route into
100
exploring criticality in architecture. Counter-
projects emerged in Brussels during the 1970s,
when architects, working in close collaboration
with local action committees, employed them as
a way to criticise the destructive forces of urban
planning and to develop alternative proposals.11
Ideologically connected with the architectural
criticism of the Reconstruction of the European
City associated with Maurice Culot and Léon
Krier, such counter-projects blended a critical –
theoretical statement with a concrete vision for
the future.12 In the form of a drawing-manifesto,
they negotiated drawing and writing, politics and
aesthetics, the existing and the imaginary,
abstract and concrete, but in ambiguous ways.
For example, despite the realistic nature of the
architectural drawings and the strong link with
local activism, counter-projects were, as a
manifesto, not supposed to be built. Also,
though architectural resistance here was
processed through drawings and not buildings,
proposals were developed for concrete
locations and dealt with real urban problems.13
The attempt to reconcile disciplinary critique
with an engagement with the world “out there”
runs through much of 1970s architecture and
architectural education: in the celebration of
the societal duty of the architect and efforts to
blend intellectual critique with design and
activism. Under Culot, at the French-speaking
architecture school, La Cambre in Brussels, this
took the shape of a quasi-militant education
that was politically allied with leftist-Marxist and
local activism, as well as being aesthetically
aligned with the historicism promoted by
Krier.14 With its distinct unit-system (under
Alvin Boyarsky), the London-based AA
departed from La Cambre’s focus on tradi-
tionalism. Various types of critical experimen-
tation emerged at the AA, where instances of
technological fetishism operated in tandem
with “live projects” (such as Brian Anson’s
ATR 19:1-14
Covent Garden activism) and Bernard
Tschumi’s Urban Politics Programme. Such
divergent approaches are evident in the Projects
Architectural Association 1946 – 1971, the only
systematic record from the period.15 Research
into a wider set of student projects from this
period may provide fertile material for looking
at counter-projects.
Peter Wilson’s The Fire: 2 amply demonstrates
how students adopted an ambiguous position
within the critical landscape at the AA during the
1970s. Wilson was an important constant in the
AA education of the 1970s and 1980s, first as a
student (1972–1974), then as a teacher (1974–
1988), which makes the project particularly
interesting to study. However, there is very little
student work available for researchers and
formal cataloguing only began at the AA archives
in 2010.16 Consequently, Wilson’s donation of
the project also informed my rationale for
studying it. When working with archives in-the-
making, one is at the mercy of the unpredictable
pace and quantity at which works become
available. Rather than identifying counter-pro-
jects through predefined categories (as is the
case in established archives), I depended on the
piecemeal donation of work to the archives. A
pleasant side-effect of such slowness is that it
invites one to attentively consider each incoming
project as a candidate counter-project and, by
doing so, to challenge the very definition of
counter-project. In more established archival
circumstances, a project by a master of seductive
drawings like Wilson would, most likely, not be
selected, for is it not the case, as Neil Leach
argued, that an architecture that aims to both
seduce and adopt a radically critical position is
unavoidably compromised?17 And, yet, Wilson’s
drawings intrigued me: they felt more vigorous,
less controlled, and less seductive than his later
work, almost naı̈ve and clumsy by comparison.
But does this make The Fire: 2 more critical?
PETER WILSON’S “AMBIVALENT CRITICALITY”
The Architectural Association, Peter Wilson,
and The Fire: 2
Peter Wilson describes his initial impressions
upon arrival at the AA in 1971 as follows:
When I got here I soon realised that [ . . . ]
what was mostly happening was politics.
I didn’t want to commit myself to saving
Covent Garden without really knowing
what architecture I would use. So I had to
find a path of my own.18
As an Australian student, influenced by Robin
Boyd and Archigram, Wilson did not blindly
embrace the AA’s ambivalent political
climate.19 Instead, he developed his own path
in the form of expressionist, seductive drawings
that were characterised by a “strange, unique
atmosphere”, as is exemplified by projects such
as The Water House (1976) and Powerscourt
(1979, part of The Villa Auto).20 These projects
signal Wilson’s theoretical period, which
coincided with his time at the AA.21 The Fire:
2 was produced by Wilson in Diploma Unit 9
under Elia Zenghelis (during 1973 – 1974, co-
tutored by Léon Krier), and as a precursor to
his joint Diploma project with Jeanne Sillett
(The Dorset Project).22 But he was also affiliated
to Bernard Tschumi’s Diploma Unit 2. The Fire:
2, therefore, occupies a fascinating position in
the AA pedagogical world and allows for a
reading of the political in architecture across the
political –ideological divergences at the AA.23
The AA Events Lists suggests that students were
exposed to weekly seminars organised in the
different units—not only seminars organised by
Tschumi in urban politics, but also cross-unit
events organised by the “urban-interest groups
in diploma” on topics ranging from socialism to
utopianism, political sociology or land econ-
omics, and special events such as seminars on
101
DOUCET
“Italian Politics” and “French Politics”.24 It is
worth noting that following such archival traces
can be misleading. Wilson himself argued that
students were not always compelled to attend
the wealth of seminars and events, and often
retired to the bar.25
Even so, students were exposed to a wealth of
divergent social and political ideas; the AA of
the 1970s anticipated the contradictions and
ambivalence of postmodernism.26 Such an
education also testifies to what Felicity Scott
has described as a new “call to order” that
signalled “a defensive re-demarcation, or
reterritorialization, of disciplinary boundaries
aiming [ . . . ] to render architecture once again
recognizable”.27 Amidst such ambivalences,
students like Wilson were able to craft their
own (critical) voice and (formal) language.
Figure 1. Peter Wilson, The Fire: 2, project overview. Box “AA Archives, 2012P:44”, Architectural Association
Archives, London. Used with permission of the copyright holder.
102
The Fire: 2’s Repertoire of Engagement with
the Real
The Fire: 2’s title indicates an intervention in a
post-disaster London:
The smoldering & hostile devistated [sic]
area is declared a non , urban , space.
To re-colonise this area[,] defended 1 km
£ 1 km squares (1 , 7) of potential
urban space are established. The
Thames linking these spaces (A , F) is
also reclaimed & walled.28
The project donation consists of nine original
drawings and seven presentation panels,
containing some of these drawings as well as
additional images and text.29 Apart from
introducing the project in its entirety (Figures 1
ATR 19:1-14
and 2), more detailed information is provided
for each of the seven project sites called
“squares” (Figures 3 to 7). The squares are
dedicated to Functional Housing (Square 1),
Nature (Square 2), Anarchism (Square 3),
Central Activities (Square 4), Commercialism
(Square 5), Industry (Square 6) and Desirable
Housing (Square 7).
Figure 1 shows the seven project squares
against a bright-orange “fiery” background—
the destroyed “non-urban” space. The inter-
vention takes the shape of a reclaimed urban
space composed of the seven squares plus a
walled River Thames. Figure 2 gives further
architectural, formal, and thematic details of
each square. However, Figure 2 also details The
Fire: 2’s unmistakeable detachment from its
surroundings, which is articulated through the
Figure 2. Peter Wilson, The Fire: 2, project overview. Box “AA Archives, 2012P:44”, Architectural Association
Archives, London. Used with permission of the copyright holder.
PETER WILSON’S “AMBIVALENT CRITICALITY”
drawings: the squares cast dark shadows onto
the surrounding territory. This physical enclo-
sure was partly induced by the studio brief
given to Diploma Unit 9, where students were
asked to “take a significant strip across
London” and test the potential of this site.30
In Wilson’s project, the strip takes the shape of
the 1 km £ 1 km squares plus the River
Thames. Outside of the strip lie the devastated
non-urban space and the surviving city of
London.
It is tempting to see the reclaimed strip as one
in which architecture defends itself from its
surroundings. One should, however, not be
misled by the fortified and defensive architec-
ture of the squares. The project also engages
with the urban condition in ways that are far
more ambivalent and more critical than initially
103
DOUCET
Figure 3. Peter Wilson, The Fire: 2, “Functional Housing—Square 1”. Box “AA Archives, 2012P:44”, Architectural
Association Archives, London. Used with permission of the copyright holder.
suggested by the drawings. Therefore, instead
of explaining the project through a specific
ideological lens, I unpacked the drawings, which
led to the identification of different operations
through which the project engages critically.
I have organised the analysis according to three
such operations. With the first—Critical
Deployment of the City and its Past—I refer to
the project’s engagement with the urban-
territorial and historical context of London.
The second, Ambivalent Criticality: Exposing
Power and the User, describes how The Fire: 2
unmasks not just the powers of the capitalist
market economy, but also the users of
architecture. Finally, Expressionistic Criticality:
Creating or Anticipating Space?, confronts the
project’s critical unmasking with its expressio-
nistic ambitions and deployment of the drawing
as a critical vehicle.
104
Critical Deployment of the City and its Past
The Fire: 2 seems detached and physically isolated
from its surroundings—whether the existing city
of London or the territory destroyed by fire. For
example, the Functional Housing Square
(Figure 3) is entirely walled and operates as
“one dense solid mass” (1 km £ 1 km!) of
housing.31 It straddles the remaining London
and the non-urban territory equally through
absolute detachment. The Nature Square, is,
likewise, explicitly detached (Figure 4). Its edges
are composed of steep, sharply cut-off rock and
mountain formations. The Anarchism Square’s
only link with the city is the River Thames.32
On some occasions, however, the squares do
engage with their surroundings. For example,
the forests on top of the Functional Housing
ATR 19:1-14
Figure 4. Peter Wilson, The Fire: 2, “Nature—Square 2”. Box “AA Archives, 2012P:44”, Architectural Association
Archives, London. Used with permission of the copyright holder.
Square follow the underlying street pattern and
the River Thames. The Nature Square similarly
incorporates existing London features, such as
the Battersea Power Station. Whilst such
efforts signal a degree of integration, they do
so ambiguously. The Functional Housing
Square, for example, considers the fact that
the Thames, Kings Road and Fulham Road pass
through the housing (a compromise, being “the
only concessions to its uniformity”).33 And
Battersea Power Station’s integration as part of
the Nature Square’s wall reinforces its fortifica-
tion. This ambiguous relationship with the
existing city is maximised in the Anarchism
Square, whose fictional history tells of con-
struction workers who retreated and walled up
their exit to the River Thames in response to
the fire, thereby fencing off the existing city.
However, the “lost” territory is reclaimed, at
least visually, through a viewing platform from
PETER WILSON’S “AMBIVALENT CRITICALITY”
where one can observe life in non-urban
territory, life both fearsome and intriguing
(hence, the voyeuristic viewing platform).
The project also integrates London through far
more subtle—and critical—registers. It con-
nects to the political turmoil of the 1970s, for
example. The destruction by fire is reminiscent
of the real London that experienced a series of
strikes by dustmen in the years around 1970.
Initiated in Hackney, these soon spread
throughout the city and resulted in growing
piles of rotting rubbish that were set alight by
Londoners. The event formed an important
trigger for what was to become “the image of
the inner city as an urban wasteland”.34 The Fire:
2 also resonates with debates that students and
teachers at the AA engaged in around the
Greater London Development Plan (GLDP).35
Its proposal of urban motorways careering
105
DOUCET

Figure 5. Peter Wilson, The Fire: 2, “Anarchism—Square 3”. Box “AA Archives, 2012P:44”, Architectural
Association Archives, London. Used with permission of the copyright holder.

through central London ignited controversies “reconstruction” appears on the drawings

that can be recognised in the Industry Square
(Figure 7), where the over-dimensioned high-
ways seem to be a cynical gesture.
The Fire: 2’s attitude towards the devastated
historic city also proves critical of the quasi-
literal reconstruction of the city as proclaimed
by Culot and Krier. Though the term
(Figure 2), its conceptualisation along the lines
of a hostile “non-urban space” is an unmistak-
able sneer at Krier’s Urban Space romanticism.
In a letter accompanying the project donation
to the AA Archives, Wilson states that, in
Diploma Unit 9, he chose to study with
Zenghelis over Krier (who, that year, tutored in
the same unit) because:

106
ATR 19:1-14
Figure 6. Peter Wilson, The Fire: 2, “Commercialism—Square 5”. Box “AA Archives, 2012P:44”, Architectural
Association Archives, London. Used with permission of the copyright holder.
we assumed his side kick, Krier’s Urban
Space fundamentalism, to be some sort
of surrealist black humour. As it turned
out he was for real and he refused to
teach us anarchist anglo-saxons [sic] after
a few agitated weeks. Thus, the emphasis
on Non-Urban space in my somewhat
pre-punk scenario.36
Wilson’s collaborative graduation project with
Jeanne Sillett, The Dorset Project, also refused to
reconstruct or idealise the past, but instead
critically re-appropriated it. A post-disaster
territory of “great disillusionment” is scattered
with remnants of a collapsed regime in the form
of decayed, yet surviving, monuments.37
Through their naming (e.g. Fortified H.Q. of
the Special Branch of Popular Harassment),
these monuments are a critical reminder of the
oppressive nature of that past.38 Both The Fire:
PETER WILSON’S “AMBIVALENT CRITICALITY”
2 and The Dorset Project evoke narratives of
urban upheavals that depart from historic
reconstruction by viewing them as productive
forces that allow change to become possible.39
Ambivalent Criticality: Exposing Power and
the User
Instead of radical opposition or direct political
action, The Fire: 2 operates critically by
exaggerating and over-identifying with power
and capitalism.40 It operates “inside and
against” capitalism, making it crumble from
within.41 For example, in the Commercialism
Square (Figure 6), Wilson seems to mock the
commercial and touristic exploitation of
London by placing the Tower of London and
capitalist giants, whether old (Ford) or new
(IBM), on pedestals, which turns them into
107
DOUCET
Figure 7. Peter Wilson, The Fire: 2, “Industry—Square 6”. Box “AA Archives, 2012P:44”, Architectural Association
Archives, London. Used with permission of the copyright holder.
freestanding objects surrounded by water.42
Similarly, a large factory and oil refinery in the
Industry Square (Figure 7) seems to over-
expose and even celebrate power. This is
achieved through the design of four “unnecess-
arily large motorways” and a massive
amphitheatre, where all parking faces the
central chimney and memorial flames and
where, during lunch break, workers drive their
cars.43 In Wilson’s narrative, the new political
regime is celebrated (the Functional Housing
Square surmounts an eternal “flame of
gratitude to the fire for bringing this system
into existence”) as much as it is exposed
(in Central Square, the regime exploits and
perver ts existing political and cultural
infrastructures).44 By (over-)exposing the con-
ditions and implications of architectural and
urban design, Wilson’s project operates as
what Bernard Tschumi calls a “counterdesign”:
108
Being a devil’s advocate, counterdesign is
aimed at creating an understanding in the
people concerned by the implications of
such developments on their everyday life,
and at leading to their active rejection of
such planning processes.45
For Tschumi, counterdesigns contribute to the
empowerment of the user of architecture.
However, it can be argued that The Fire: 2
expands such a reading of the counterdesign.
Not only does Wilson expose structural
mechanisms (of power and domination), he
also exposes the limitations of the empowered
user.46 The Desirable Housing Square, in
particular, over-identifies with the suburban
dream of the detached house with private
garden. Only a hundred highly desired houses
are available on a gated mini-estate. Out of
gratitude at being among the lucky few, the
ATR 19:1-14
inhabitants created a public Pleasure Garden, a
gesture that Wilson’s narrative exposes as
fraudulent: the garden is only open to the
inhabitants and their guests and, thus, is
perceived from the outside as a mere “temple
of privatisation”.47 The Industry Square also
exposes preconceptions about the user. Built as
a fortress with four surveillance towers
equipped with search-lights at the corners,
the factory appears to operate through the
logic of power and domination. However, the
occupants of the surrounding non-urban space
perceive them as “prisoner towers” that keep
the occupants in, rather than the anarchists
out.48 Wilson here seemingly affirms Michel
Foucault’s argument that “architecture is [in
itself] neither liberating nor oppressive”, but
that domination can only be achieved through
use and appropriation.49
Expressionistic Criticality: Creating or
Anticipating Space?
As a counter-design, The Fire: 2 also evinces an
atmospheric and personal expression. This is
most explicit in the Anarchism Square where the
main intervention is a surreal monument in the
form of an over-sized telephone that is
blackened by the fires of the non-urban field; a
blackness that is graphically reinforced by the
judicious use of shoe polish (Figure 5).50 This
blend of irony, expressionist drawing, and
surrealism distinguishes Wilson’s work from the
more formal expressionism of his contempor-
aries, such as Piers Gough’s ICI Headquarters
(literally built in the shape of the letters I, C, and I)
and Alex Marshall’s Gloria (a building in the
shape of a woman’s head).51 Its expressionism
also distinguishes it from the historicist repro-
duction of generic, universal types, resonant with
the divergences between the identified histori-
cist and conceptualist projects in the A Space, A
PETER WILSON’S “AMBIVALENT CRITICALITY”
Thousand Words exhibition, organised by Ber-
nard Tschumi and RoseLee Goldberg in 1975.52
Through its combined expressionistic and critical
gesture, The Fire: 2 exemplified the exhibition’s
call to combine politics with “the expressionistic
fantasies which are part of the design process”.53
With Wilson’s personal search for a more
sensual and atmospheric architecture still
immersed in the politicised culture of the AA,
The Fire: 2 had not (yet) fallen victim to the purely
“formalist and semantic investigations” and
obsession with images that would eventually
hamper social and political engagement.54
Wilson’s project was, like Felicity Scott’s analysis
of Rem Koolhaas, Elia and Zoe Zenghelis, and
Madeleine Vriesendorp’s 1972 Exodus, or the
Voluntary Prisoners of Architecture project, one
of “engaged withdrawal”.55 Withdrawal is
evidenced in Wilson’s emphasis on the reality
created within rather than anticipated by the
drawings, or: the space as drawing instead of
the space created through drawing. The
imagined spaces were not supposed to solve
problems, but, instead, “they exist as drawings
and artefacts”.56 Yet, the drawings serve as a
vehicle for critical engagement; through spatial
narratives, the drawings intervene critically in
concrete real-world preoccupations and offer a
designerly investigation into the (spatial)
conditions that are either present or imagin-
able.57 In comparison to his contemporaries,
however, Wilson’s work was considered to be
of a spatial and architectural sophistication that,
despite being “locked” in the drawing, suggests
buildability.58
A Counter-Project that Criticises from
Within?
This logic of futurity, the eternal return of
the repressed utopian future, haunts
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postmodernism and to some extent
defines it, even as its architecture seems
condemned to reproduce a world-
historical status quo.59
Through The Fire: 2, I have demonstrated how
criticality operates through and travels within
multiple registers. This has allowed me to
refine the understanding of what Reinhold
Mar tin calls postmodernism’s “rules of
engagement”.60 Through The Fire: 2, I read
architectural critical engagement beyond the
unproductive choice of withdrawal or engage-
ment, oppositional critique or appeasement. I
conclude that in order to take criticality
seriously, one needs to dare to (re-)articulate
the role of the architectural drawing as an
important vehicle for (critical) engagement
with the real and, consequently, to challenge an
overly dismissive evaluation of (all) postmo-
dern architectural drawings as mere seduction
and stylistic reverie doomed to depoliticise. By
re-emphasising the drawing, one can also
question those critical practices that prioritise
praxis and direct action and, in doing so,
perhaps too quickly dismiss the drawing as part
of architecture’s critical engagement. Is it not
precisely by underrating the expressionist side
of the drawing that one risks also dismissing
the drawing as a vehicle for imagination,
including the imagination of other futures? It is
therefore important, via Wilson, to return to
the expressionistic and imaginative aspects of
Tschumi’s political project of the 1970s by re-
articulating imagination and “interior experi-
ence” as important agents for dealing with the
“paradox of ideal and real space”, or, more
succinctly, the tensions between the space
invented by architects (amongst others) and
the space that is a product of social praxis.61
Rather than investing in the construction of
ever more intelligent justifications for choosing
110
between autonomy and commitment, between
concepts and experience, or between archi-
tecture as an unavoidable product of or critical
transformer of society, this essay aims for a
more refined understanding of precisely those
tensions. It does so through an “infra-analysis”
of The Fire: 2, a mode of enquiry that Bruno
Latour defines as “writ[ing] stories that do not
start with a framework but that end up with
local and provisional variations of scale. The
achievement of such stories is a new
relationship between the historical detail and
the grand picture”.62 Such an approach allows a
discovery of the subtle and, at times, contra-
dictory operations that are at work in The Fire:
2. For example, the infra-analysis reveals The
Fire: 2’s ambivalent, expressionistic criticality,
which evidences how students, exposed to
multiple ideologies at the AA in the 1970s,
crafted their own voice in both critical and
aesthetic terms, thus challenging any reading of
the then emergent postmodern architecture in
either political or stylistic terms. We discover
The Fire: 2’s implicit ways of “reaching out”, such
as by mobilising the user of architecture
through a project narrative, which challenges
a reductive opposition between critical with-
drawal (paper architecture) and direct engage-
ment (live projects). Unpacking The Fire: 2’s
interactions with the city also challenges the
uncritical deployment of the past that became
postmodernism’s most contentious trait.
My analysis of The Fire: 2, therefore, expands on
recent attempts to “recover a history of
theoretical tools and critical strategies that
arose in the late 1960s and early 1970s”.63
And it is only the beginning. The Fire: 2 forms
the first crystallisation of a larger piece of
research that facilitates—in collaboration with
the young, and growing, AA archives—the
gradual resurfacing of student works that
sit typically in between rather than within
ATR 19:1-14
AA Units and their respective ideologies.
This permits an expansion of the set of cases
(such as Exodus) used as “reflexive counter-
point[s] to contemporary work”64 and will
consequently permit a refinement of our
understanding of architecture’s struggle to
reconcile its political, social, formalistic, and
aesthetic agency.
Acknowledgements
The research received financial support through
the Research Stimulation Fund at the School of
Notes
1. Due to its theoretical focus, this article is
primarily based on the original drawings and
other archival sources. The project is mobilised
neither to revise the debates at the time nor to
offer a historiography of this period at the AA.
Such concerns are par t of the author’s
larger study of counter-projects, which, among
other things, revisits the late 1960s and early
1970s education at the AA, and originates in
the study of counter-projects in the Brussels
context. See Isabelle Doucet, “Counter-
Projects and the Postmodern User”, in Kenny
Cupers (ed.), Use Matters: An Alternative
History of Architecture, London: Routledge,
2013, 233– 248.
2. Donna Haraway in Nicholas Gane, “When We
Have Never Been Human, What is to Be Done?
Interview with Donna Haraway”, Theory, Culture
& Society, 23, nos 7 – 8 (December 2006), 135–
158, 139. My self-imposed task of digesting is
inspired by Donna Haraway’s attitude towards
critical theory and intellectual heritage.
I interpret this as working one’s way through
contradictions and through categories and
taxonomies that may well be inappropriate.
Differing from Bruno Latour, Haraway claims to
be “more willing to live with indigestible
intellectual and political heritages” (such as
critical theory) (139). I read here a willingness to
work with the contradictions that are
embedded within the categories through
PETER WILSON’S “AMBIVALENT CRITICALITY”
Environment and Development, The University
of Manchester. I would like to thank Edward
Bottoms from the Architectural Association
Archives in London for his generous support and
kind permission to reproduce the drawings, and
the team of the AA Photo Library. I would like to
thank colleagues at the Manchester Architecture
Research Centre (Albena Yaneva, Leandro
Minuchin, Lukasz Stanek), Kenny Cupers, Angela
Connelly for her excellent proofreading, and
the anonymous reviewers of this journal for
their invaluable comments. I am indebted
to Peter Wilson for his generous comments
and questions.
which we think and, therefore, to not take
those categories for granted, or, as Haraway
insists, “don’t deify the category” (137).
3. The first wave was also manifest through an
obsession with technological innovation and
design methodology; see George Baird,
“1968 and its Aftermath: The Loss of Moral
Confidence in Architectural Practice and
Education”, in William S. Saunders (ed.),
Reflections on Architectural Practices in the
Nineties, New York: Princeton Architectural
Press, 1996, 64 – 70.
4. Baird, “1968 and its Aftermath”.
5. See Simon Sadler, “An Avant-Garde Academy”, in
Andrew Ballantyne (ed.), Architectures: Modernism
and After, Oxford: Blackwell, 2004, 33 – 56;
Charles Jencks, “The Rise of Post Modern
Architecture”, Architectural Association Quarterly,
7, no. 4 (October/December 1975), 3 –14;
Charles Jencks, The Language of Post-Modern
Architecture, New York: Rizzoli International, 1977
(1st edn); and Harry Francis Mallgrave and David
Goodman, An Introduction to Architectural Theory:
1968 to the Present, Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell,
2011, 53–64 (“Early Postmodernism”).
6. For the critical theory discussions in the US
(influenced by exchanges with the AA),
including K. Michael Hays and Peter Eisenman,
111
DOUCET
see Louis Martin, “Fredric Jameson and Critical
Architecture”, in Nadir Lahiji (ed.), The Political
Unconscious of Architecture, Surrey: Ashgate,
2011, 171– 209. The “post-critical” emerged
first in the US, then infiltrated European debates
through, for example, the “Projective Land-
scape” Conference organised by Stylos, 2006,
TU Delft, and through regular exchanges with
the Delft School of Design.
7. Exemplified by the publication of two architec-
tural theory readers representing the “old” and
the “new” theorising in architecture: K. Michael
Hays (ed.), Architecture Theory since 1968,
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998; and Kate
Nesbitt, Theorizing a New Agenda for Architecture:
An Anthology of Architectural Theory, 1965 – 1995,
Princeton, NJ: Princeton Architectural Press,
1996. Key texts of the post-critical debate include
Robert Somol and Sarah Whiting, “Notes
around the Doppler Effect and Other Moods of
Modernism”, The Yale Architectural Journal, 33
(2002), 72 – 77; George Baird, “‘Criticality’ and its
Discontents”, Harvard Design Magazine, 21
(Fall – Winter, 2004–2005), 16 – 21; and Rein-
hold Martin’s “Critical of What? Towards a
Utopian Realism”, Harvard Design Magazine, 22
(Spring– Summer 2005), 104– 109.
8. For a more complete introduction to the post-
critical, see A. Krista Sykes (ed.), Constructing a
New Agenda: Architectural Theory 1993 – 2009,
New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2010,
14 – 29; Mallgrave and Goodman, An Introduction
to Architectural Theory, 177– 193 (“Pragmatism
and Post-Criticality”); Saunders (ed.), Reflections
on Architectural Practices in the Nineties; William
S. Saunders (ed.), The New Architectural
Pragmatism: A Harvard Design Reader, Minnea-
polis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2007.
9. Manfredo Tafuri, Theories and Histor y of
Architecture, trans. Giorgio Verrecchia, London:
Granada, 1980 [1968].
10. Mark Dorrian emphasises the importance of the
AA from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s and
the presence of Bernard Tschumi, Rem
Koolhaas, and Robin Evans in “Criticism,
Negation, Action”, The Journal of Architecture,
10, no. 3 (2005), 229– 233, 230.
11. Léon Krier and Maurice Culot, Contreprojets—
Controprogetti—Counterprojects, Brussels:
Archives d’Architecture Moderne, 1981. See
112
also Doucet, “Counter-Projects and the Post-
modern User”.
12. Also connected with the “Critical Reconstruction”
(Berlin), the neo-traditionalism of the Prince
Charles Community Architects (UK), the Council
of European Urbanism, and New Urbanism (US).
13. The combination of critique and alternative
proposals distinguished the counter-projects
from other types of anti-schemes. Jencks, “The
Rise of Postmodern Architecture”.
14. Reinforced by the Head of School’s ideological
affiliation with Krier and Culot.
15. James Gowan (ed.), Projects Architectural Associ-
ation 1946 – 1971, AA Cahiers Series,
no. 1. London: Architectural Association, 1974.
The AA unit system was fully operative by
1972– 1973. See Andrew Higgott, Mediating
Modernism. Architectural Cultures in Britain,
London: Routledge, 2007, 153 – 187; Igor
Marjanovic, “Alvin Boyarsky’s Delicatessen”,
in Jane Rendell et al. (eds), Critical Architecture,
London: Routledge, 2007, 190– 199; and Irene
Sunwoo, “From the ‘Well-Laid Table’ to the
‘Market Place’: The Architectural Association
Unit System”, Journal of Architectural Education,
65, no. 2 (2012), 24 – 41.
16. Considering the internationalisation of the AA
under Alain Boyarsky, this is somewhat surprising.
17. Neil Leach, The Anaesthetics of Architecture,
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999, 78.
18. As quoted in Peter L. Wilson, “Alvin Boyarsky
Interviews Peter L. Wilson”, Bridgebuildings þ
the Shipshape, London: The Architectural
Association, 1984, 7.
19. Peter Cook recognised in Wilson’s Australian
roots an unmistakable beaux-arts tone (Wilson,
“Alvin Boyarsky Interviews Peter L. Wilson”, 10).
The AA’s political ambiguity was exposed during
the 1971 Paris trip, confronting AA students
with far more radical political action.
Bernard Tschumi and Martin Pawley, “The
Beaux-Arts Since ‘68”, Architectural Design, 9,
(September 1971), 533– 566.
20. Bruno Minardi, “Towards a Single Great
Mysterious Project”, in Wilson, Bridgebuildings
þ the Shipshape, 2 – 3. See also Peter Cook,
ATR 19:1-14
“Unbuilt England—Its Structural Background”,
A þ U, 83, (October 1977), 4 – 21, 82 – 84; Peter
Cook, “Drawing with Expression and Atmos-
phere”, in Drawing, the Motive Force of
Architecture: AD Primer, Chichester : Wiley,
2008, 116– 117; and Peter Wilson, The Villa
Auto, exhibition catalogue, London: Architec-
tural Association, 1980.
21. Leaving the AA in 1988 to concentrate on the
Muenster Library (Bolles þ Wilson’s first major
commission) signalled a shift away from drawing
into the “act of building”: Peter Wilson,
“Presence, Absence, Mass: Further Interven-
tions” (Lecture at the AA), 13 October 1997,
AA Photo Library DVD Collection.
22. The Unit’s theme, “The Utopian City”, drew on
the “The City as Meaningful Environment”
competition (organised by Casabella and the
Italian Organisation for Industrial Design. Casa-
bella, no. 378 (June 1973), 42 – 45) and its
famous 1972 entry, Exodus, or the Voluntary
Prisoners of Architecture (see further). Elia
Zenghelis, “Unit 6: Urban Design Course Ideal
City Projects”, unit outline, 6 March 1973; and
“Timetable Week 9”, box no. 2011:12 – Ag.
No.: 2342, AA Archives, London.
23. Andrew Higgott, “Alvin Boyarsky Memorial
Exhibition: AA Student Work 1972– 1990”, AA
Files, 22 (Autumn 1991), 75– 81.
24. AA Events Lists, 1973–1974. Tschumi’s seminars
coincided with his early writings on politics: “The
Environmental Trigger”, prepared for a 1972
symposium at the AA, published in James Gowan
(ed.), A Continuing Experiment: Learning and
Teaching at the Architectural Association, London:
The Architectural Press, 1975, 89–99; and the
Chronicle in Urban Politics (1973, seminar report).
25. Email correspondence, 18 April 2013.
26. Wilson was moreover influenced by Anthony
Vidler’s seminars on architecture parlante, held in
loose connection with Unit 9: email correspon-
dence 18 April 2013; Julia B. Bolles-Wilson and
Peter L. Wilson, Bolles þ Wilson. A Handful of
Productive Paradigms, Recent Work, Bolles þ -
Wilson: Munster, 2009, 258– 259.
27. Felicity D. Scott, Architecture or Techno-Utopia:
Politics after Modernism, Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press, 2007, 3.
PETER WILSON’S “AMBIVALENT CRITICALITY”
28. Peter Wilson, project overview panel, Box “AA
Archives, 2012P:44”, Architectural Association
Archives, London.
29. The seven panels were donated in the form of
print-outs of what looks to have been made from
digital scans of presentation panels, with expla-
natory text and images (some of which are copies
of the nine original drawings). Because only a
selection of the original drawings could be
reproduced here, I have used seven of the nine
original drawings for their illustrative and
explanatory qualities. Note that these seven
images do not correspond with the seven squares
of the project (they also include, for example,
drawings representing the project as a whole).
30. AA Prospectus 1973 – 1974, 18 – 20.
31. Peter Wilson, Panel “Functional Housing—
Square 1”, Box “AA Archives, 2012P:44”, AA
Archives, London.
32. More penetrable from the non-urban territory,
it is considered “the most vulnerable Square”.
Peter Wilson, Panel “Anarchism—Square 3”,
Box “AA Archives, 2012P:44”, AA Archives,
London.
33. Wilson, Panel “Functional Housing—Square 1”.
34. Evocatively depicted in Conrad Atkinson’s
photographic series, Garbage Strike: Hackney,
1970, shown first in the Sigi Krauss Gallery
(Covent Garden, 1970– 1971): http://www.p
hotomonitor.co.uk/2012/05/atkinson/ (accessed
17 December 2013).
35. A 1969 (draft) structure plan that emerged from
the Greater London Council (a strategic
planning authority created by the London
Government Act in 1963).
36. Letter from Peter Wilson to Edward Bottoms,
31 July 2012.
37. Jeanne Sillett and Peter Wilson, “L’antisimbologia
della città industriale”, Casabella, no. 413 (1976),
22 – 27, 24.
38. Sillett and Wilson, “L’antisimbologia della città
industriale”, 25.
39. The collapse of a regime is reminiscent of
Tschumi’s use of “urban conflict” and conse-
113
DOUCET
quent consideration of the city as “a privileged
field for revolutionary actions” (Tschumi, “The
Environmental Trigger”, 89).
40. A detailed discussion of over-identification, as
theorised by, amongst others, Slavoj Žižek, and
within the context of cultural practice (e.g. BAVO),
falls outside the scope of this article. See Isabelle
Doucet, “If We Are, Indeed, All ‘Embedded’, Then
What to Do Next? A Review of BAVO’s Too
Active to Act”, Footprint Journal, 8 (Spring 2011),
91–96.
41. Scott recognised such an approach in Exodus
(Architecture or Techno-Utopia, 260), with which
The Fire: 2 shows unmistakeable affinity.
42. Wilson, Panel “Commercialism—Square 5”,
Box “AA Archives, 2012P:44”, AA Archives,
London.
43. Citation from: Wilson, Panel “Industry—Square
6”, Box “AA Archives, 2012P:44”, AA Archives,
London. The motorways “deter attackers” whilst
cutting their way through non-urban territory.
44. Citation from: Wilson, Panel “Functional Hous-
ing—Square 1”. In Central Square, 10 Downing
Street (Ministry of War), the Houses of
Parliament, the Queen Elizabeth Hall, and the
Hayward Gallery are re-appropriated. Central
access and control here intertwine with
entertainment and promotion (cruise trips to
other squares): Peter Wilson, Panel “Central
Square—Square 4”, Box “AA Archives,
2012P:44”, AA Archives, London.
45. Bernard Tschumi, Architecture and Disjunction,
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997 [1996], 13.
Similarly The Dorset Project monumentalises the
cultural attitudes of the prevalent powers as a
means to demystify them and trigger their
collapse.
46. In his later work, Wilson continued to pursue
the user as par t of architecture’s social
responsibility, albeit less in political than in
experiential and atmospheric terms: the user
“interprets”, “reads”, or “feels” the building.
“Interview with Peter Wilson”, in Francesca
Serrazanetti and Matteo Schuber t (eds),
Inspiration and Process in Architecture: Bollesþ -
Wilson, Milan: Moleskine, 2011, 10 – 32; Wilson
“Presence, Absence, Mass”; Peter Wilson, “Not
to Underestimate Commodity”, Lecture at the
114
AA, 11 September 1998, AA Photo Library
DVD Collection.
47. Peter Wilson, Panel “Desirable Housing—
Square 7”, Box “AA Archives, 2012P:44”, AA
Archives, London. A haunting, inferno-like image
is idiosyncratically positioned near to this text as
if to further emphasise that the idealisation was
not all that it seemed.
48. Wilson, Panel “Industry—Square 6”.
49. Michel Foucault, “Space, Knowledge and Power”,
in Paul Rabinow (ed.), The Foucault Reader,
London: Penguin Books, 1991 [1984], 239–256.
50. Wilson, Panel “Anarchism—Square 3”; and
letter from Peter Wilson to Edward Bottoms,
31 July 2012. The nod to surrealism was
influenced by Dalibor Veseley (Wilson, “Alvin
Boyarsky Interviews Peter L. Wilson”, 7); the
interest in the poetry of a work by Mike Gold
and Ernst Lohse.
51. Gowan, AA Project 1946 – 1971, 86, 102; Cook,
“Unbuilt England”, 18 – 19.
52. Bernard Tschumi and RoseLee Goldberg, A Space,
A Thousand Words, exhibition catalogue, London:
Royal College of Art Gallery, 1975. The “London
Conceptualists” referred to a “cliquish” following
of Tschumi, including Will Alsop, Paul Shepheard,
Jeanne Sillett, Jenny Lowe, Nigel Coates, and Peter
Wilson (Cook, “Unbuilt England”, 20; and “Judge’s
Notes. Comfort in the Metropolis. Winners of the
Shinkenchiku Residential Design Competition
1977”, The Japan Architect, 250 (February 1978),
11). See also Sandra Kaji-O’Grady, “The London
Conceptualists: Architecture and Performance in
the 1970s”, Journal of Architectural Education, 61,
no. 4 (2008), 47.
53. Space was considered the “common denomi-
nator” of art and architecture (RoseLee
Goldberg, “Space as Praxis”, Studio Inter-
national, 190, no. 977 (September/October
1975), 130.
54. Citation from Scott, Architecture or Techno-
Utopia, 8.
55. Scott, Architecture or Techno-Utopia, 267.
56. As was also the case in the Dorset Project; see
Sillett and Wilson, “L’antisimbologia della città
ATR 19:1-14
industriale”, 23. Reminiscent of Tschumi’s
scepticism about designing social alternatives,
believing that they would eventually be appro-
priated by power groups; Tschumi, Architecture
and Disjunction, 6.
57. Tschumi’s suggestion to “design conditions”
rather than to “condition design” (Architecture
and Disjunction, 6), triggered a preoccupation
with space as a condition: explored in, and hence
articulating, the medium of drawing (Cook,
“Judge’s Notes”, 8). The city as a condition (not a
place) returns in Wilson’s later work on the
Eurolandschaft (Wilson, “Not to Underestimate
Commodity”).
58. Noted by Cook (“Judge’s Notes”, 11) and Elia
Zenghelis, in relation to Sillett (“Session Report
August 1974”, Jeanne Sillett, student file 4/72,
Box UG/SR/124 SILL – SIVE, AA Archives,
London). Note that Peter Wilson’s student file
is missing.
PETER WILSON’S “AMBIVALENT CRITICALITY”
59. Reinhold Martin, Utopia’s Ghost: Architecture and
Postmodernism, Again, Minneapolis, MN: Univer-
sity of Minnesota Press, 2010, xxi.
60. Martin, Utopia’s Ghost, xxi.
61. Bernard Tschumi, “Questions of Space. The
Pyramid and the Labyrinth (or the Architectural
Paradox)”, Studio International, 190, no. 977
(September/October, 1975), 142.
62. Bruno Latour, “The Politics of Explanation:
An Alternative”, in Steve Woolgar (ed.),
Knowledge and Reflexivity: New Frontiers in
the Sociology of Knowledge, London: Sage, 1988,
155– 176, 174.
63. Scott, Architecture or Techno-Utopia, 281.
64. Scott, Architecture or Techno-Utopia, 11. This also
resonates with Martin’s revisiting of post-
modernity in Utopia’s Ghost.
115