Chapter 3/ Architecture and Existentialism

1st paragraph
? criticizing the explanation of the development of modern mvt of arch
? 3 reasons why conception of modern’s dev is weak
? 1st:founding fathers believed that the dev was of a natural process
? 2nd: belief that the development were merely changes resulting of modernism’s principles expanding over new areas and problems
? 3rd: straight progress of modernism’s advancement as a relay race, where subsequent generations all derived from first gen

2nd
? but a recent radical crisis suggest that the continuity of this modern mvt is broken
? some believe that discontinuity result of individuals deciding to stop instead of cultural influence
? individuals fall into 2 camps: those who hated modernism and those who wanted to return to its pure origins

3rd
? states aim of attempting to explain this crisis to a new hypothesizes instead of the ones listed previously
? but first, there is not one crisis in arch of modern mvt but many crises b/c there does not exist a coherent, unitary modern mvt
? rather than attempt to explain all of the crises, focus only on one: existentialism
? reason for this focus is to prove that the evolution of modern mvt results from not one gesture, event, person but from an ‘epistemological’ changes that affect the culture of a specific time and thus arch is affected as well???????????
? epistemology: branch of philosophy that studies the nature of knowledge, its foundations, limits and validity

4th
? proposes to consider existentialism not strictly as a philosophical current but as a cultural mvt that brought with it a rearranging of ethical and aesthetic viewpoints in the years following WWII
? he states that is it interesting to note that the reordering of cultural objects due to an alternative conception of the individual and of society, shifts modern arch’s theoretical structure toward different values
? shift in values produced profound changes in the conceptualization of arch in Euro and US during the 50s

DWELLINGS: 1st
? Athens Charter of 1933 divided the entire field of arch into 4 areas: dwelling, recreation, work and transportation that are distinct and autonomous

2nd
? destruction of WWII on housing brought housing, dwelling to the forefront, urgent and pressing problem
? in manifesto published of 1947 Baukunst und Wekform by a highly influential group of G architecture, declaring that architects must only address fundamental needs
? newly-built residential units must be self-sufficient, physically and socially
? only center of the old city should become a cultural and political heart
? “for housing, only what is simple and valid should be pursued”

3rd
? manifesto reaction to WWII
? shied away from new or experimental in the hopes that arch would return back to its basic primitive and pure origins
? “grounding in experience”?????

4th
? 1947 meeting of CIAM, Aldo van Eyck, Dutch architect denounced “any kind of architectural mechanization” (i.e. formulas such as those stated by Athens Charter and the G manifesto)
? targeted the canon of modernism, functionalism
? his denouncement created a rift bet architects, separating the young (van Eyck’s side) from the old (those still believing functionalist prewar convictions)
? van Eyck’s objective was not to achieve the best functional house that fulfill all the necessities, but of an architecture that sought to “satisfy man’s emotion”
? he was not the only voice, Jacob Bakema also called for an arch that aimed to “stimulate man’s spiritual growth”

5th
? thus with these views, existentialism debuted on the arch scene
? architects directing themselves toward humanism, emotions, spiritual growth, authenticity and validity
? change in direction of culture also evident in writings

6th
? CIAM 1953, shift in values most well articulated and exemplified in housing by British architects, Peter and Alison Smithson
? Believed that "a theory was thought out from and for housing”
? Phenomenological nature: object to theory
? House as nucleus and everything radiating out from the house, the street, district, city
? Great contrast to the Athens Charter divisions
? Places individual at center of organization of habitable space
? On the same thread, Joseph Lluis Sert, architect called for construction of houses to be at a human scale

7th
? CIAM 1956 dominant focus on identity (remaining still in the existentialism frame)
? Identity of great imp b/c it was the extreme base point, without it, there would be nothing
? Contrast to modernism’ functionalism

8th
? CIAM 1959 full divorce from modernism’s functionalist direction
? Call for identity
? Deep serious rift bet young of van Eyck, Smithsons and old of Le Corb, Walter Gropius of Bauhaus
? Dispute not simply a superficial difference of viewing things
? Difference betw organicist and mechanist is life, inspired by the natural world
? Example of the humanist concept of core and cluster
? Core: heart, the profound nucleus
? Cluster: gathering of living beings, coexistence that bestows meaning on the individual as being something bigger than itself, part of a larger human group
? These are the issues dominant in postwar arch and urban reconstruction scene
? In this urban transformation, arch focus on the dwelling, the house in order to respond to and fulfill needs

9th
? Also a different discussion on housing
? Regards to a text by Martin Heidegger’s ‘Building, Dwelling, Thinking”
? Highly late 19c influential G philosopher
? Created quite a stir with his paper

10th
? dissection of Heidegger’s paper
? very dramatic setting of a city reduced to rubble by Allied bombing raids
? so focus for reconstruction of housing on builders, architects, planners and politicians
? grounded his argument of the vital importance in a physical approach, task at hand
? “Contemporary man no longer dwelled.........”
? “the need to reconstruct was .... a consequence to the condition of the modern man: stateless, homeless
? why is the modern man stateless and homeless????

11th
? dwelling is not a state of being but an action
? man must learn to dwell and only by an awareness of their rootlessness and desire to become rooted
? in order to dwell, one must construct by gathering necessary elements, things, objects
? from rootlessness to dwelling and to construction
? end of dwelling is residence, a place that consist of a moral or spiritual CORE where life interacts with things

12th
? argument grounded with references to existing architecture
? reflections on dwelling space both radical and fundamental
? in order to enjoy a space, one must truly experience that spatiality
? dwelling space is not geometrical but existential, that comes from our perception of an object to the formulation of a theory i.e. phenomenology
? reaction to the technology and its falsity
? he calls for the house to be a response to the essential need for a rooted constitutive dwelling and discarding inessential geometrical habitation
? defines as “qualitative dwelling: one that would situate men bet earth and gods”

13th
? concludes this section by recognizing that similar aims were formulated at the same time, in the same postwar context by architects striving for a revision of modernism’s mechanization and by a philosopher
? both groups reflecting on the problem of dwelling in a contemporary world
? this fact reveals the relationship of their concerns, aspiration and viewpoints  i.e. existence of the existentialism mvt

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Chapter 10/ Sadomasochism: Criticism and Architectural Practice

This chapter deals with a dissection of the sadomasochistic relationship between architectural practice and criticism.

from Oxford Dictionary
Sadism: enjoyment of cruelty to others
Masochism: pleasure in suffering physical or mental pain
Sadomasochism: sadism and masochism in one entity

1st paragraph
? architectural criticism not to be regarded as an elitist and highly esteemed practice
? criticism derives from judgment
? criticism from Oxford dictionary: finding fault, censure
? realize that "judging and dispensing justice" is not a "sovereign act of pure reason" but rather as an everyday practice that dictates our social behavior by binding us to convention, power and chance encounter between judge and defendant
? must remember that criticism is not only for those of lofty mind but a guttural "hand-to-hand combat between information seeking public recognition" and the power of the collective critics that aim to sanction, filter, censor the information
? thus in a changing society that questions its own foundations and in a culture that must regenerate its structures of thought everyday, any kind of conflict that arises between any info that wishes to be expose to the public and the censorshipdom has taken critical confrontation to a new level
? any encounter marked by violence defines criticism
? what de Sola Morales is implying is that criticism at this present stage has become harsh and cruel without any true support or basis that it parallels sadomasochism which is pain for pain or pleasure sake; there is no other initiative for the leather, whips and chains except that of experiencing pain and domination

2nd
? in our modern culture, those involved with architectural criticism are inept to deal with that "anxiety" resulting from the violent confrontations between information and misinformation
? from Manfredo Tafuri’s Teorie e storie dell’architettura, de Sola Morales draws the line: “there is no historical, technical or visual knowledge”
? which provokes the question of how judgment can be passed if there is no basis, no foundation or standard from which to draw comparison?
? de Sola Morales goes on to clarify that statement by reporting that the “scientific history of positivism (philosophical system recognizing only facts and observable phenomena) has given way to narration” and the articulation of material conditions that structured the need for facts has been replaced by microhistory (focusing at the small units that make up the big pics versus recognizing the big picture), the universes of mentalities (personal characterization of things by way of how people feel and think about it) and the emergence of a new subjectivism” (everything me me me and not a universal ideal)

3rd
? de Sola Morales remarks that it is impossible to write a treatise on architecture b/c it is impossible to order the accumulation of changing technical data and its evershifting functions and applications that have denounced its own mother, science, either hierarchically (according to importance) or by homogeneous groupings; also says that even science has involuted itself
? “there is not one vision but many”
? the sources for these images and sensory devices are completely varied and diverse, fragments from somewhere in space (no longer from one planet, earth)
? difficult b/c “the construction of visual memory is completely different in a rural environment than in an urban one”
? example: difference between a taxi driver and a painter is that each sees things with varying emphasis, the taxi driver is more concern with safety or with areas of potential customers while the painter focuses on the colors and physical relationships the house has with the street

4th
? thus within this context, criticism spiderwebs out, looking for what “Deleuze has called folds of knowledge, provisional coagulation of truth upon which to set the scales of justice” i.e. some sort of standard from which to draw comparison
? then de Sola Morales begins his analysis into the sadomasochistic relationship between critics and architects
? he starts off with a description of how Deleuze reacted in this situation
? Deleuze controls his anxiety by aggression
? This aggression makes up for the distancing of his object and his shaky arguments (which is odd b/c when you think of criticism, you value the judgments b/c they are able to intimately penetrate the object, the idea so this distancing of the critic and the object is bizarre)
? The aggression is reflective of sadism but let it be noted that it is not a private perversity but a mal du siecle, translated as world weariness, wrongs of the century which de Sola Morales describes as "a manifestation of a syndrome that affects relations with the universe of facts and thus with the world of architectural objects”
? this sadism runs parallel with the masochism of practicing architects
? b/c the architects who produce these artifacts whose meanings are not clearly nor naturally revealed commit themselves to be forever burdened by their works (they cannot let it go b/c they always need to be at its side, explaining its meaning) and thereby destined to receive punishment from their “chastisers” i.e. critics

5th
? So de Sola Morales in this paragraph, bemoans that if only there was a knowledge, that was universal, all-applying and logically transferable, then the insecurities of those working on the practical side (critics) would be so much easier b/c the critics would  know for sure what the ideal standard is
? back in the old times, all that was needed to produce architecture was the possible,  “derived from experience of the trade” and that “the general, cultural and social framework” was never called into question b/c it was solidly established
? and architecture was merely physical material labor capable of beautiful results of what can be produced (b/c production of the object was never called into question; questions concerning the why should I produce the object or how to produce this thing)
? “it was not a global discourse addressing the great questions filling individual consciences with uncertainty”
? the architecture of back then was beautifully evident, the material and meaning all implicit in the final act

6th
? recently, a horde of calls to return back to the crafts/roots
? cries are evident of a desire to truly determine (i.e. weed out) the truly dexterous in eye and hand and who can sustain the pressure (distance the anxiety of a formative activity – the how should it be, and why? Questions that bombard me before I can actually start constructing or designing)
? this anxiety manifested the moment the “ideological system constructed by avant-gardes collapsed” and the modern mvt became infected and so “it was no longer possible to design everything from a chair to a city with the same assurance possessed by the architects of the generation of great master”
? those great masters were not assailed by self-doubt nor were they burdened by too much complex thinking

7th
? well today, architecture practice lacks a thesis
? architecture needs someway of understanding what lies beyond the framework of a building (which means?? contextualization of its place in time?)
? this is evident in contemporary architectural journals (hey go find journal!) in their awkward distance betw text and image, object and discourse, practice and criticism
? this reflects the masochistic tendency on the part of the architects that allow the critics to pass harsh judgment without any true backing (just for pain sake) and not to mention the absolute disease of this relationship that is based on distancing and fear rather than some celestial dialogue to reveal the truth

8th
? in the next paragraph, de Sola Morales believes that not only it is possible to develop an internal critical attitude that is beyond the reach of the great debates and crises of contemporary thought but it absolutely necessary
? it would be hard b/c judgment cannot be devoid of culture, it is umbilically linked to the cultural universe
? so architecture and architects cannot be excluded from the cultural universe
? and to those who take this internal critique to an extreme, who cry out “let us speak alone amongst ourselves, of our own affairs!” is lacking on courage and thus reveal their allegiance to the legion of "children of resignation"

9th
? so there is a critical attitude possible but it is thwarted by the masochism and sadism of others
? that critical attitude being of "an internal discourse based on experience and actual practice but avoiding the purely autobiographical"
? critics become "cultural agents that seek to intervene in the construction of meaning"
? their voice is necessary b/c in order "to understand one’s own work, to be able to problematize it, calls for a certain estrangement, an operation of alienation," that is feasible through the critic

10th
? works of Viollet le Duc, Otto Wagner, Gottfried Semper are examples of the discourse of architects on architecture
? they don’t attempt to theorize the entire field of architecture; their work is valuable b/c it "represents an explicit reflection of an experience and not a perfection of a system"
? even facing the "crisis of the encyclopedias" (how architecture needs to be reflective of all the issues that face mankind) these architects, whose commitment was to practice above all, was able to articulate their own discourse
? experience, history and project are interwoven in their writing that reveals nothing but the verbal articulation of a practice
? theirs is not criticism, not history, not treatise
? it is their “endeavor to escape the isolation of the professional studio, the closed domain of works, projects, and pure experience, in the hopes of finding a word worthy of being heard”