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The MIT Press
Cembridge,Massachusetts
London,Englind
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S p a c e eand EY n
Can one attempt to make a contribution to architectural discourseby relentlessly stating that there is no spacewithout event,no architecture wittout program?This seems be our mandate at a time that has wimessed t:he evival of historicism or, altematively, of formalism in almost every architecturd circle. Our work argues hat architecture-its social relevance and formal invention-cannot be dissociated fron the events that "happen" in it. Recentproiects
Plog?.m
insist constantly on issues of program and notation. They stress a critical attitude that observes,an lyzes, and interprets some of the most controversial positions of past an presentarchitectural deolog,res. Yet this work often took place against the mainstream of th
prevalent architectural discourse. Fo
throughout the 1970s here was an exacerbationof stylistic concems at the expenseof programmatic ones and a reduction of architecture as
form of knowledge to architecture
as knowledge of form. From modemism to postmodernism, the history of architecture was surreptitiously tumed into a history of styles. This pewerted form of history borrowed from semiotics the ability to
read" layerc of interpretation
but reduced architecture to a system of surface signs at th expense of the reciprocal, indif{erent, or even conflictive relationship of spacesand events. This is not the place or an extensiveanalysis of the situation that engulfed the critical establishment. However, t should be stressed hat it is no accidentthat this emphasis on stylistic issues corresponded o a double an wider phenomenon: on the one hand, the increasing role of the developer n planning large buildings, encouragingmany architects to become mere decorators,an on the other, the tendency of many architectural critics to concentrate on surface eadings,signs,metaphors, and other modes of presentation, olten to the exclusion of spatial or programmatic concems. These are two faces oi a single coin, tlpical of an increasing desertion by the architectural profession of its
,y rrd
responsibilities vis-e-vis the events and activities that take place n the spaces t designs. At the start of the 1980s, he notion of proSramwa still forbidden territory. Programaticconcemswere rejectedas eftovers from obsolete unctionalist doctrines by
)r
those polemicists who saw programs as mere pretexts fo stylistic experimentation. Few dared o explore the relation between the formal elaboration o{ spacesand the invention
:e
of programs, between the abstraction of architectual thought and the representation of events. The popular dissemination o{ architecturd images through eye-catching reproductions in magazines often tumed architecture into passive obiect of contemplation instead of the place thet
.e
conJrontsspacesand actions. Most exhibitions of architecture in art galleriesand museums encouraged/surface"practice an presented he architect's work as {orm of decorative painting. Walls and bodies, abstract planes and figures were
ll
rarely seenas part of a single signifying system. History may one day look upon this period as the moment ol the loss of innocence in twentieth-century architecture: the moment when it became clear that neitfier supertecbnology,expressionist functionalism, nor neo-Corbusianism could solve society's ills and that architecture was not ideologically neutral. A strong political upheaval, a rebirth of critical i-
thouSht in architecture, and new developments n history and theory all triggered phenomenon whose consequences
rI
are still unmeasured.This general os of innocence esulted in a variety of moves by architects according o theirpolitical
sprce6
and Events
t.
Progrtrn
or ideological eanings. In the early I970s, some denounced architecture altogether, arguinS hat it practice, n the current socioeconomic context, could only be reactionary an reinforce the status quo. Others, influenced by structural linguistics, talked of "constants" and the rational autonomy of an architecture that transcendedall social forms. Others reintroduced political discourse and advocateda retum to preindustrial forms of society.And still others cynically took th analysesof style and deology by Barthes,Eco,or Baudrillard and diverted them from their critical aims, tuming them over like a glove. Instead of using them to question th distorted, mediated nature of architectural practice, these architects injected meaning into their buildings artiffciallt through a collage of hist oricist or metaphorical elements. The restricted notion of postmodemism that ensued-a notion diminished by comparison with literature or art-completely and uncritically reinsertedarchitecture nto the cycle of consumption. At the Architectural Association {AAl in progam entitled "Theory LanSuage, Attitudes." Exploiting the structure o{ the AA, which enLondon, I devised
couraged autonomous research an
independent lecture
courses, t played on an opposition between political an theoretical concems about the city (those of Baudrillard, Lefdbvre, Adomo, Lukics, and Benjamin, for examplef and an ar sensibility inlormed by photographn conceptual art, and performance.This opposition between a verbal critical discourseand a visual one suggested hat the two were complementary. Students' projects explored that overlapping
14
ed lr
nd ral oy :rs to ck il he se ty on.l ln n-
sensibility, often n a mannersulffciently obscure generate initial hostility through he school.O f coursehe codes sed in the students'work differedsharply rom those seen schools nd architecturd of8cesat the time. At the end-ofyearexhibition texts, tapes, iIms, manilestos, ows of storyboards,andphotographsof ghostlike ffgures,eachwith their own speciffc conventions,intruded in a spacearrangedaccording o codesdisparate rom those of the profession. Photography as usedobsessively: "live" insert,as artiffcial documentation, s hint of reality nter' posed architectural drawing-a reelity neverthelessdistanced and often manipulated, filled with skillful staging with characters nd sets n their complementaryelations. Studentsenacted ictitious programs nside carefully selected "real" spaces nd then shot entire photographic e' quencesas evidence of their architectural endeavors.Any new attitude to architecture ad to question ts mode of representatron. Other works dealingwith a critical andysis of urban lile were generdly in written form. They were tumed nto a book,edited designed, rinted,an published
LN
by the unit; hence, the words of architectutebecamehe work of architecture," as we said. Entitled Chronicle of Urban Politics, the book attempted to analyzewhat distinguished our period ftom the precedingone. Texts on frag'
rg
mentation, cultural dequalificatior\ and the "intermediate city" enalyzed onsumerism, otems, and representationalism. Someof the texts announced,severalyears n advance, preoccupationsow common o the cultural sphere:d islo-
re rd
Sp.ces
.trd
Evcrts
al6ta .'uaano pu
.tuaH,.oe[oc otoqd pstrltun
cated imagery artificialit,
representational reality versus
experienced eality. The mixing of genres and disciplines in this work was widely attacked by the academic establishment, still obsessedwith concepts of disciplinary autonomy an self-re{erentiality.Bu the signiff.cance f such events s not a matter of historical precedenceor provocation. In superimposing ideas an
perceptions, words and spaces, hese
events underlined the importance of a certain kind of relationship between abstraction and narative-a
complex iux-
taposition of abstract concepts and immediate experiences, contradictions, superimpositions of mutually exclusive sensibilities. This dialectic between the verbal and the visual culminated in 1974 rr a seriesof "literary" projectsorganized in the studio, in which texts provided programsor events on which students were to develop architectural works. The role o{ the text was fundamental in that it underlined some aspectof the complementing lor, occasionally, ack o{ complementingJof events and spaces.S ome exts, like Itdo Calvino's metaphorical descriptions of "Invisible Cities," were so "architectural" as to require going far beyond the mere illustration of the author's already powerful descriptions; Franz Kalka's Buzow challengedconventional architectural perceptionsand modes of representation; EdgarAllan Poe's Masque of the Red Death (done during my term as Visiting Critic at Pdnceton UniversityJ suggested arallels between narrative and spatial sequences.Such explorations of the intricacies of languageand spacenaturally had to touch on )ames foyce's discoveries.Dudng one of my trips from the
Spaces
and Events
'/
Pzoglrrn
United States gave extracts fuotn Finnegans Wake as the program. Th site wa London's Covent Garden and the architecture was derived, by analogy or opposition, from ]oyce's text. The effect of such researchwas invaluable in providing framework fo the analysis of the relations be tween events and spaces, eyond functionalist notions. Th unlolding of events n a literary context inevitably suggestedparallels to the unlolding of events in architecture. Space ersus Program To what extent could th literary narrative shed ight on the organization of events in buildings, whether called "use," "functions," "activities," or "programs"? II writers could manipulate the structure oI stories in the same way as they twist vocabulary and grammar, couldn't architects do the same, organizing th
program in a similarly objective, de-
tached or imaginative way? For iI architects could self,.
consciously use such devices as repetition, distortion, or iuxtaposition in the formal elaboration oI walls, couldn't they do the same hing in terms of the activities that occuned within those very walls? Pole vaulting in the chapel, bicycling in the laundromat, sky diving in the elevator shaftl Raising these questions proved increasingly stimulating: conventional organizations o{ spacescould be matched to the most surrealistically absurd sets of activities. Or vice versa: he most intricate an perverseorganization of spaces
th ar
could accommodate the everyday lile of an average suburban family. Such research was obviouslv not aimed at
JM
in
providing immediate engwers, whether ideological or prac-
be
ticd. Far more important was the understanding that the
:x tn
relation between progra"' and buildi''g could be either highly sympathetic or contrived and artificial. The latter, oI course, fascinated us more, as it reiected all functiondist
leanings.
It was a time when most architects were questionin& attacking, or outright reiecting modem movement orthodoxy. We simply refused to ehter tfiese polemics, viewing them as
he rld ey le lfor
stylistic or semantic battles. Moreover, f this orthodoxy was often attacked for its reduction to minimalist formd manipulations, we refused to enrich it with witty metaphors. Issues of intertextuality,
multiple readings and dual codings had to
integrate the notion of program. To use a Palladian arch for an athletic club alters both Palladio end the nature oI the athletic event. As an exploration of the disjunction between expected orm and expecteduse,we begana seriesof proiects oppo-singspeciffc programs with particular, often conflicting
ed
'ry'
spaces. Programatic context versus urban typology, urban iypology versus spatial experience, spatial experience versus procedure, and so on, provided a dialectical framework for research. Wq-consciously suggested programs that were im-
to
possiblg
es
yard. At the same time, issues o{ notation became funda-
to hou'se trem: a stadium in 91 the sites that were Soho, a prison near Wardour Street, * ballroom in. a church-
Sp.ccs
rrd
Eveota
Program
mental: iI the reading of architecture was to include the events that took place in it, it would be necessary
devise
modesof notating such activities. Severalmodes of notation were invented to supplement the limitations of plans, sections, or axonometrics. Movement notation derived lrom choreography,and simultaneous scoresderived from music notation were elaborated or architecturd purposes. If movement notation usually proceeded from our desire to map the actual movement o{ bodies in spaces, increasingly becamea sign. hat did not necessarily refer to these movements but rather to the idea of movement-a
form o{ notation that was there to recall that ar-
chitecture was also about the movement of bodies n space, that their languageand the languageof walls were ultimately complementary. Using movement notation as a means of recalling issues was an ettempt to include new and stereotypical codes
architectural drawing and, by extension,
it perception; ayerings, uxtaposition, an superimposition of imagespurposefully bluned the conventional relationship between plan, graphic conventions and their meaning in the built realm. Increasingly the drawings becameboth the notation of a complex architectural rcality and drawings {art works) in their own right, with their own frame of reference, deliberately set apart from the conventions of architectural plans and sections. The fascination with the dramatic, either in th program (murder, sexuality, violencel or in the mode of representation strongly outlined images,distorted anglesof vision-as
if seen from a diving airforce bomber), is there to
force a response.Architecture ceases o be a backdrop for actions, becoming the action itselL ln
All this suggests ha "shock" must be manu{acturedby the architect if architecture is to communicate. Influence from the mass media, from fashion and popular
il
magezines, informed the choice of programs: the lunatic asylum, the fashion institute, the Falklands war. It also in-
ed ln
fluenced the graphic techniques, from tle straight black and white photography for the early days to the overcharged
ly 'e
grease-pencil llustration of later years, stressing he inevi-
lr-
matic sense that pervades much of the work, cinematic
table "mediatization" of architectural activity. With the dra. devices replace conventional description. Architecture be
ly
comes the discourse oI events as much as the discourse oI
oI
sPaces. From our work in the early days,when event,
in )n
movement, and spaces were analytically luxtaposed in mutual tension, the work moved toward an increasingly syn-
rP
thetic attitude. We had begunwith a critique of the city, had gone back to basics: to simple and pure spaces, o barren
o-
landscapes, roomi to simple body movements, $'alking in
rt
straight line, dancing; to short scenarios. And we gradually increased the complexity by introducing literary parallels
el
and sequences of events, placing these programs within existing urban contexts. Within the worldwide megalopolis,
LN
of of
new programs are placed in new urban situations. The pro. cesshas gone full circle: it started by deconstructing the city, today it exploresne
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Sp.ces
a|!il Evctrtt
codesoI assemblage.
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