Attila Sohar wrote:
I get a sense that in recent years architectural schools abandoned the
urban problematic to only concentrate on the Architectural aspect.
I've saved this for some time because I found it curious. I wasn't sure
what perception it reflects, from where, and precisely of what. I
personally feel that this comment would suit architecture education
maybe ten years ago, but that at least in many American schools today,
the urban is now The Thing. In general, I have witnessed many schools in
Europe and America shift towards a will to engulf practices of urban
planning as well as landscape architecture - in fact to deny their
distinctive roles - while permitting little or no reciprocal
communication. Likewise, architects may slowly be growing savvy to and
appropriative of other disciplines and fields of study (as well as the
importance of changing media technologies or a globalized marketplace)
but remain by and large reluctant to take realistic or even inclusive
roles with those sources. Maybe this reflects a sense of being
overwhelmed, of being threatened, and with good reason.
I find Rem Koolhaas' post of 3 August surprisingly suggests this for me,
as does some of his recent work in and outside of Kassel. Koolhaas once
wrote of his early work on the city something to the effect, "you have
no idea how unfashionable it was at the time..." Now comments like this
one
ARCHITECTURE=A9. Property value, otherwise only marginally related to
the art or science of building. Designed in the PRD under unprecedented
pressures of time, speed, and quantity. =
have plenty of snap, but for me substitute wry jadedness, cleverness
for stance. Life can become a CATALOG=A9, but it doesn't mean it ought to=
=2E =
Likewise with S,M,L,XL, and its Bigness essay: this commands an
increasing and increasingly witty control of the media that affect
architectural production today, but denote rather than resist or
position. The conditions of construction (and the construction of
conditions, to paraphrase Bernard Tschumi) are in no sense beyond
discussion after the statistics of square footages have rolled by: Greg
Ulmer's post on Nike alludes to this (as does a great site on Tibet's
role here, http://www.milarepa.org/)
Pearl River Delta is pretty new to me, but the phenomenon is not too
foreign to architects. Many young nomads of building production (not
just architects and engineers; also the construction labor) shuttle
across the planet like this. Everyone hears the wind blow towards the
SouthEast or South Africa now. The ecstatic development may be without
its component of global
knowledge (Rem), but for that we still have yesterday's goldrush as
images of tomorrow's next Acropolis of Commerce: Berlin.
=
2.
(Ve-)Reinigung, or
En attendant Bundesregierung
Visitors can't believe it when told that architecture bureaus left and
right are closing shop: the city is full of cranes! Look for
yourself:http://cityscope.icf.de/ The site, which includes a quicktime
VR updated every few minutes, is part of the PR machine that is turning
Potsdamer Platz into Europe's biggest "Schaustelle" (showplace, a play
on "Baustelle" or construction site). The image effects at once a
flattening and a deepening of Berlin. The image can be roved within
strict limits, capitalizing on a sense of "presence" that apes the view
from which it is taken. This also crops out Berlin's happily surviving
diversity of cultures, subcitizenships and economies. The camera is
perched atop the
Info-Box, a very permanent-looking temprary building where many sorts of
multimedia toys show the privatisation of a much-vexed "public space."
Much of this passes under the local rubric of "Critical Reconstruction,"
a thin veil for urbanistic and political business-as-usual. This is
important because it reinforces the notion that Germany is now strictly
"reunified" and becoming "restored" to its natural state (and not
annexed and being remoulded by a politically conservative wave of
speculation.) If the camera could be further rotated or refocused, it
could
home in on Kreuzberg or any of the many other nodes in town which are as
"central" as Mitte, and which happily sustain an impressive amount of
cultural, urbanistic and even economic deviations. This is a rare place
where -perhaps by virtue of its history of fragmentations - citizenship
is not too hard to come by. This I mean in the sense that Chevrier/David
put it: "to be part of the picture." This is surely not the picture at
Potsdamer Platz. But the new Mitte is more for citizens of the world
than of Berlin.
Another essential component to the image-making complex supporting
construction in Berlin and indeed the greater western world is the
increasing use of 3D modelling software to render and sometimes animate
the wonders to come. Such work could potentially but does not as yet
coopt production in its other aspects (technical, economic,
environmental,...) This is something that I know Brian has done some
interesting thinking on, and I would be interested to hear him expand on
this process.
Mike Davis, who spoke in Kassel a few days ago, elaborated on the city's
changes from an extremely politicized image-base. Beginning with a
satellite image of fires (the riots after the Rodney King verdict), he
nonetheless disfavored physical aspects of urbanity. Maybe this can
serve as a sort of counterpoint to Pearl River Delta.
=
3.
state
Having finally been "there" (Kassel, documenta) it seems that the event
has succeeded in engaging and even creating multiple lines of
communication, within itself and its history and the city in its own
multiplicities. It's an extremely satisfying and expansive process that
occurs, one that changes perpetually. It unfortunately renders the
breaks all the more obvious where it holds back. Here one would have to
consider first the uncomfortable minor voices of the "Sockumenta" and
"Innenseite," which has its own long history in Kassel. That
notwithstanding, the event comes close at points to pushing a question
of its relation to the sources that support it: the artists, the
visitors, the city and government, and above all the sponsors. The
inclusion of works like those of Hans Haake's and General Idea's videos
stick out here, for me at least. They both use black humor in such a way
that provoke conflict as a democracy (or vice versa), as a fragile test
of tolerance and an invitation to participate. Which leads me to the
last quote of my long post...
and wrote:
> =
> (incidentally, perhaps we consider the souvenir?)
In one of the shops along the Treppenstrasse (part of the documenta
parcours in Kassel), a poster is displayed amongst other non-official
souvenirs for the event: entitled "Kassel by Night", the poster consists
of a black plane with a red X on it. The gag, a visual one-liner, is
part of a global work-in-progress by an anonymous artists collective.
It's the "(city name here)" by Night series of postcards and posters.
It may be a sort of blurring of Brian's description. The documenta logo,
itself enigmatic but certainly a critical act, is turned critically
rightside up again. It is repositioned within its rightful system of
capitalist, unified Germany. It's a cheap dumb product to some. It is
also a potential imaginistic criticism of subjectivities latent in dx's
own construction. It could be a part of the city's life, or a part of
us, or vice versa. It awaits our position.
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