Context,

enforced For several centuries context was not the tangible condition determining a cohesive body of architectural expressions and languages to be followed (or to be opposed, eventually). It was neither the spontaneous translation into built matter of cultural values, shared by a community. In fact that word was absent from the architectural discourse. Its surge, in the early 70s, derives, as pointed out by Adrian Forty, from two parallel trajectories. One was a fortuitous back and forth between Italian and English languages around the concept of ambiente developed by Ernesto Nathan Rogers in the late 50s, its critique by Aldo Rossi in the Architecture of the City, the translation into English of that word as context and its return into Italian as contesto. The second was the introduction of the term by Colin Rowe, in 1966, within his Urban Design studio taught at Cornell University. While Rogerss and Rossis interest was mainly historic (even if divergent), Rowes concern was formal, supposing the possibility to extract a sort of geometrical guidance for new projects based on the reading of urban morphology.1 Even if different in scope, the three approaches share a common indifference to the reasons and historical construction of context. Or better said, contexts. In the case of Rogers ambiente is a sort of immanent reality that predates transformation by architectural design. Rogers writes of preesistenze ambientali, almost non- described existing conditions which are composed of urban fabric, traces of the past and monuments (sometimes ruins of these). Preesistenze are just there, one has to feel them and therefore translate an almost emotional understanding into new design. It seems almost a matter of politeness to take them into account, while in fact it is the consequence of the humanist attitude of Rogers. For Rossi that approach was too weak as it failed to consider architectural forms as concrete abstractions (inspired from Marxist theory) of the economical processes at the base of the evolution of the city. And for Rowe context was a background for design, capable to mediate between modernity and tradition. In fact contexts, if considered as the combinations of urban morphology (in plan and elevation), materials and construction techniques, typological repetitions and architectural languages have been carefully crafted political projects. Since the Renaissance, the city has been one of the principal sites of deployment of sovereignty, especially in the strongly centralized states, articulated by an intricate web of laws and regulations. The shape and dimensions of buildings, their alignment and character, the material and finishing and therefore the morphology of entire areas of cities have been the consequence of the application of construction regulations, issued by different governing bodies, acting at the level of the state, the province and the municipality. Regulation happened in the spaces that were not directly invested by the symbolic appearance of the state mediated through architecture. Context has become the inescapable manifestation of political authority, beyond the too narrow economic rationale insinuated by authors as Rossi. The surge of the nation-state in Europe coincided with the rationalization of
Hudson, London 2000), 132-135.
1 Context in Adrian Forty, Words and Buildings. A Vocabulary of Modern Architecture, (Thames and

architecture and construction, under political and administrative ruling. That phenomena happened before and elsewhere: already in 1103, in China, during the flourishing Song dynasty, the Yingzao Fashi, literally "Treatise on Architectural Methods or State Building Standards" by the Chinese author Li Jie was adopted by the Emperor Huizong as a regulatory document, setting architectural canons for builders, architects, and literate craftsmen as well as for the different building agencies depending from the central government. Almost unique in its genre, the book, organized in 34 chapters, combined through texts and drawings, the scope of an architectural treatise with the regulatory mandate of a legislative bill2. Through the definition of specific architecture qualities it was a vector of expansion of the Song dynastys power. In Europe the affirmation of the directing role of the state in matter of architecture and construction appeared and acquired strength later. It is particularly interesting to consider the specific case of France, as the development of the administrative and legislative procedures applied to questions of building established in the Ancient Regime was to become the model for successive and analogous endeavors, which happened throughout the continent and were exported to the colonies. Depending directly from the kings authority, the jurisdiction on construction, denominated Chambre des btiments was established already in 1268 at the end of the kingdom of Louis IX, and was placed under the responsibility of the Maon du Roi, a magistrate responsible to oversee the construction and maintenance of the royal properties. But it was not until the edict of 1607, issued by Henri IV that strict rules were enforced with reference to new constructions and urban organization. The article 4 sanctioned that wood structure (pan de bois) and cantilevered balconies or rooms were prohibited, for fear of fires and the alignment of streets profiles was introduced, with particular emphasis on the verticality of faades. Already in 1599 Henri IV had created the role of grand-voyer, attributed to Maximilien de Bthune, first Duke of Sully. The responsibility of the grand-voyer was principally to control the physical conditions of circulation: bridges, roads, countryside tracks, rivers, public squares and streets were to be kept free of obstacles to guarantee ease of movement3. It is interesting to notice that the first principles of regulations of construction derived from matters of mobility: the expansion of the political power of the centralized state over its own territory was developed through axis and linear connections, so what was at their margins, the built matter, needed to be put under control. It is not coincidental that between the XVII and XVIII century, the baroque composition of the urban fabric and often of
2 Qinghua Guo, Yingzao Fashi: Twelfth-Century Chinese Building Manual in Architectural History

Vol. 41, (1998), 1-13.

3 The introduction to the edict by Henri IV says: Ayant reconnu cy-devant combien il importoit au

public que les grands chemins, chausses, ponts, passages, rivires, places publiques et rues des villes de cestuy nostre royaume fussent rendus en tel estt que, pour le libre passage et commodit de nos sujets, ils n'y trouvassent aucun destourbier ou empeschement; nous avions cette occasion, fait expdier nostre edict du mois de mai 1599, pour la cration du titre d'office de lestat de grand-voyer de France in Henri IV, dit sur les attributions du grand-voyer, la juridiction en matire de voirie,, la police des rues et chemins, etc, December 1607.

nature (parks as in Versailles but also entire regions as the Black Forest), articulated with focal points and rectilinear connections; the first geographical surveys, measuring territories by triangulation, and construction regulations happen at the same moment. The expansion of sovereignty through the creation of new legislative and administrative bodies was accompanied by an extension of the royal rule through the incorporation of space that was not to be acquired but to be normed. Paris became, of course, the testing ground for that process and the model for the epoch. It is important to notice that the administrative body mandated to control all constructions in Paris was the police, which had an extended set of responsibilities4. The functions of the grand-voyer were absorbed in 1628 by the bureau des finances. In 1667 under Louis XIV, the Ordonnance de police sur les pignons et pans de bois, inspired as a counter-measure after the Great Fire of London of 1666 determined the maximal height for the facades on streets, 16 meters until the cornice, limit which is still valid today in central Paris. Between 1783 and 1784, a series of royal edicts established for the first time that the height of the buildings was to be determined by the width of the streets. The succession of regulatory documents from 1667 until the late XIX century established precise modalities of control of almost all actions related to building, determining a significant augmentation of the administrative personnel assigned to the tasks of monitoring the transformation of the city. The objectives of these policies were multiple: on one hand promoting the symbolic value attributed to the beauty of the urban environment as the expression of power, and on the other inscribing the control of the state inside the minute scale of the everyday life.5 Almost all regulations of the nascent nation states in Europe through the XVIII and XIX centuries developed the hypothesis of control through alignment, dimensioning of the buildings with reference to the size of public space, and determination of materials and construction techniques. They often created within police forces, specialized corps dedicated to the survey of new constructions, with mandates more or less intrusive and authoritative, depending on the organization of each state. 4 An extended description of the roles of the police in Paris, including building surveillance is at the
core of the notorious book by Nicolas de la Mare, Trait de la police, Jean et Pierre Cot, Paris, 1705- 1710. 5 The pervasive level of control can be perceived in several decrees, for instance in the Dclaration du roi portant rglement pour les fonctions et droits des officiers de la voirie, issued the 16th of June 1693, that opens with a explicit obligation to communicate and obtain approval for any construction and includes an extremely detailed list of architectural elements that are regulated, because they might have an impact on the public space: Faisons dfenses tous particuliers, maons et ouvriers, de faire dmolir, construire ou rdifier, aucuns difices ou blitiments, lever aucuns pans de bois, balcons ou auvents cintrs, tablir travails de marchaux, poser pieux et barrires, tais ou trsillons, sans avoir pris les alignements et permissions de nos dits Trsoriers de France, peine contre les contrevenants de vingt livres d'amende, pour lesquelles permissions d'apposition d'tais, pieux, barrires, travails de marchaux et auvents cintrs, il sera pay aux dits commissaires de la voirie cinq livres. il sera pay aux dits commissaires de la voirie cinq livres. Toutes permissions ou congs pour apposition des objets ci-aprs: Abat-jour, Appuis de boutiques, Auvents, Barreaux, Bouchons, Bornes, Cages, Chssis verres saillants, Comptoirs, Contre -vents ouvrant en dehors, Dos-d'ne, choppes, Enseignes, tablis, talages, Etaux, viers, Fermeture de croise ou de soupirail ouvrant sur la rue, Huis de cave, Marches, Montants, Montoirs cheval, Montres, Pas, Portes, Plafonds, Perches, Rteliers, Seuils, Siges, Tableaux.

The current construction codes, in Europe, North and South America are based on the previous accumulation of legislation, which beginning often dates back to the pre-capitalist period. Although often formless in their sanitized technical language, composed of equations and written descriptions, they still embody a political strategy that aimed to inscribe control and order into the built matter, through the use of geometry and means proper to architecture. The operative tools and often the material consequences of this historical process are still active, while the power of the state has often dissipated. Especially when operating within the oldest cities, context or ambiente, or perhaps lurbain to recover the notion by Henri Lefebvre, is neither a neutral scenario, to be read only in its form, nor the embodiment of sometimes too simplistic derivations from economical theory. It is an articulated stratification, where history has modulated several variations through time and where conflict and oppositions are constantly morphing. Rather than being ignored, it is where architecture could find its wildest excitement.