Scotland+ Venice

BUILDING SCOTLAND PAST + FUTURE

PAST + FUTURE is credited to the following contributors:

Neil Gillespie OBE RSA (Elect) FRIAS RIBADesign Director, Reiach and Hall Architects, Visiting Professor of Architecture, Scott Sutherland School of Architecture and the Built Environment, Robert Gordon Univeristy

Laura KinnairdAssociate, Reiach and Hall Architects

Lewis ThomsonAssistant, Reiach and Hall Architects

The Research Groups

Group 01: ‘Being There, The Fierce and Beautiful World’James GrimleyDirector, Reiach and Hall Architects, Part-time Studio Tutor at The Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (ESALA)

Chris LowryLecturer in Architecture, The Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (ESALA)

Fergus DavidThe Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (ESALA)

Sophie CrockerThe Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (ESALA)

Group 02: ‘Embedded Modernism’Alan HooperArchitect, Programme Leader, Department of Architecture, The Glasgow School of Art

David PageArchitect at Page/Park Architects, Visiting Professor, University of Strathclyde

Andrew Frame University of Strathclyde

Christopher DoveThe Glasgow School of Art

Fraser Maitland University of Strathclyde

Jamie WhelanThe Glasgow School of Art

Group 03: ‘Land Works’Fergus PurdieRSA (Elect), Architect at Fergus Purdie Architects, Part-time Studio Tutor School of the Environment, University of Dundee

Rowan Mackinnon-PrydeArchitect at Reiach and Hall Architects, Associate AE Foundation Associate, Editor of Matzine

Ashley ToshScott Sutherland School of Architecture & Built Environment, Robert Gordon University

William PurdieUniversity of Strathclyde

Group 04: ‘Outsiders’Samuel PennLecturer in Architecture, Scott Sutherland School of Architecture & Built Environment, Robert Gordon University, AE Foundation Co-founder and Director

Cameron McEwanLecturer in History and Theory of the City, Architectural Design Tutor, AE Foundation Associate

Penny LewisLecturer in Architectural History, Scott Sutherland School of Architecture & Built Environment, Robert Gordon University, AE Foundation Co-founder and Director

Hugh LawsonScott Sutherland School of Architecture & Built Environment, Robert Gordon University

Volha DruhakovaScott Sutherland School of Architecture & Built Environment, Robert Gordon University

In addition we would like to thank the Scotland + Venice Partner Team (The Scottish Government, Creative Scotland and The British Council), Architecture & Design Scotland and the Saltire Society. We also thank Reiach and Hall Architects.

During October of 2014 four groups of Scottish based architects, academics and students each spent a week at the Venice Architecture Biennale. During their sojourn each of the groups were free to engage with the Biennale and Venice although they were tasked with organising an evening event during their stay which would be open to the public and invited guests. The event and their engagement with the Biennale would be an extension of the research they had undertaken in Scotland. Prior to attending the Biennale the groups had each created a newspaper which documented and illustrated their research. The theme of their research was focused on Scottish Modernism 1950 -1970, stemming from an appreciation of a long forgotten book, Building Scotland, Past and Future by Alan Reiach and Robert Hurd written in 1944. This Scottish perspective sat within the overall theme for the Biennale, curated by Rem Koolhaas, Absorbing Modernity, 1914-2014. Within the overarching theme Koolhaas himself curated a major exhibition that was concerned with Elements, heralded as an uncovering of architecture’s origins. The newspapers were central to the Scottish contribution to the 2014 Biennale. Scotland is essentially part of the official UK presence within the Biennale. Scotland is defined as a ''residence'' within the UK Pavilion. There is no physical venue within the Giardini for Scotland to exhibit works. The groups were therefore simply there, handing out free copies of the newspapers and engaging in a cultural exchange with whoever they could. Out with the Giardini the groups had access to the Ludoteca, a deconsecrated chapel, in which they could present their evening event. It could be argued that Modern Scottish architecture beyond Mackintosh and Gillespie Kidd and Coia is virtually unknown outside Scottish borders. Except for a handful, contemporary practitioners do not act globally. The Venice Architecture Biennale is the most important architectural platform for exchange and debate, I believe that it is critical that Scotland attends. It is vital that our voice is heard, however faint.

I would like to thank the partners, the Scottish Government, Architecture and Design Scotland, Creative Scotland and the British Council for supporting and enabling our collective attendance at the 2014 Venice Biennale. I would like to thank the groups for the huge commitment and effort they each made to the project. Given the sketchiness and ambition of the brief, modesty of the budget and the limitations of time before the event, the quality and breadth of the research that is evident within the newspapers is wonderful. Each group freely gave a considerable amount of personal time to Scotland +Venice 2014. I would finally like to thank Laura Kinnaird for her skillful management, design and commitment. She was the keystone in making Scotland + Venice 2014 happen. It was always my hope that the research would simply till the compacted soil of our contemporary memory of modern Scottish architecture. I think the groups have done much more than aerate the ground, they have prepared fresh territory for further research and exploration.

Scotland+ Venice

TEXT BY NEIL GILLESPIE

PAST + FUTURE 1

REFLECTION - 2014 VENICE BIENNALE

As a practicing architect I would prefer to be curated than curate. If I were ever to be curated however I would wish to be allowed to explore new territories, to be given time to move beyond what I already know. So set with the enviable task of curating Scotland+Venice, 2014, I was keen to avoid an outcome that I as curator could control or predict but I rather wanted to set a scene which released creative contributors to agree their own course, hopefully finding and revealing untrodden paths and personalities. As outlined in the introductory newspaper the theme set was Scottish Modern Architecture, 1950- 1970. This stemmed from my interest in the booklet, Building Scotland : Past and Future by Alan Reiach and Robert Hurd. My interest in that book is manifold. Firstly is the fact that the practice I work in was founded by Alan Reiach therefore there is an obvious connection. The second attraction is the optimism and ambition that the book exudes through the authors’ obvious belief in the importance of the role of architecture in helping to shape a society. Finally is an interest in the fundamental role, the acknowledgement and understanding of history and roots play in our ability to move forward with confidence and energy. The subtitle of Past and Future of Reiach and Hurd’s book became for me the main thrust for the research. Many have argued the role of the past as a vehicle has in dealing with the present. Duncan MacMillan for example in reviewing the work of contemporary Scottish artist, Will MacLean, also acknowledged by Sorley MacLean in his foreword, “His, [Will MacLean] is not nostalgic or self-pitying: rather it draws strength from the qualities and the continuity of Highland culture, while seeking universal and contemporary metaphors from it and from the tragedy of Highland history. He should be seen in the tradition of Scots Renascence, however, in the way that his art relates the history and traditions of Scotland to the objectives of modernism’’ and ‘’ his realization that art, is not remote, abstract and self-contained entity, but a way of reflecting on life’s concerns, both immediate and wider.” [Symbols of

Survival, The Art of Will MacLean by Duncan Macmillan, Mainstream

1992]

I am also reminded of the underlying role memory and a history plays in the science fiction film, Bladerunner. A major element of the story revolves around the anguish that Rachel feels when she learns that her cherished memories were not hers but had been implanted in her. She is in fact not human but a replicant. A replicant has no history. This lack of a history is what distinguishes a replicant or artificial being from a human being.

In the final scene the magnificent replicant, Roy, played by Rutger Hauer in his famous monologue Tears in the Rain, recalls , “I have seen things you people wouldn’t believe….. All these moments will be lost in time, like tears in the rain.” So in time even a replicant has a history that in effect defines them and then dies with them. The generation that worked within the period 1950 – 1970 in Scotland are disappearing. In recent years we have lost the key figures, Isi Metzstein and Andy MacMillan. It was an opportune moment to recall the work of that generation and hopefully speak with surviving key figures at first hand. The chance to explore our immediate past was enabled through the overall theme for the National Pavilions of the 2014 Biennale, Absorbing Modernity 1914 – 2014 curated by Rem Koolhaas. Many of the national pavilions approached the theme as a way of recovering personalities and talents that either were unknown or were forgotten. There were three components to the Biennale under a banner of Fundamentals. The National Pavilions were guided by the title of Absorbing Modernity 1914 – 2014, the Central Pavilion had an exhibition entitled Elements and there was third exhibition Monditalia in the Arsenale. The Biennale, particularly the Elements exhibition, has received mixed responses in the architectural press. The Elements exhibition was a show within a show curated personally by Koolhaas. Though beautifully choreographed in parts, for me, Elements was merely a building trade show. The elements were concerned with building rather than architecture, akin to looking at ingredients for a meal that had yet to be devised. Of course architecture is comprised of elements, floors, walls staircases ramps materials details. Indeed developments in technologies i.e. the lift, enable new possibilities but something else happens when people of talent and imagination use these elements to create buildings, only

occasionally however does architecture emerge. It is easy enough to define the elements of building but immensely difficult to define how architecture is created. A wonderful book produced for the Biennale by Guilia Foscari, Elements of Venice, reverses the process, taking Venice and breaking it down into its elements. The book clearly illustrates how these components serve the whole; that is Venice. Peter Eisenman said “He's stating his end”, adding: “Rem Koolhaas presents the Biennale as la fine [the end]: ‘The end of my career, the end of my hegemony, the end of my mythology, the end of everything, the end of architecture’.” Eisenman said the Elements show was like language without grammar: “Any language is grammar,” he said. “So, if architecture is to be considered a language, ‘elements’ don't matter. So for me what’s missing [from the show], purposely missing, is the grammatic…..” Koolhaas doesn't believe in grammar.” Edwin Heathcote, writing for the Financial Times describes the biennale as “an exuberant display of architectural anxiety, a pixelated view of architecture not as a single, coherent cultural entity but as a series of micro-narratives, of parallel and often contradictory histories.” Kieran Long, writing in Dezeen, calls it “a map of the Koolhaasian psyche,” a cynical and depressing series of deep mineshafts from which we are unable to see horizontally, unable to achieve the kind of synthesis that the world needs from its architects.” The Mondoitalia exhibition was concerned with creating a “comprehensive portrait” of the host country, Italy. The exhibition filled the long halls of the Arsenale with amongst other exhibits a layering of 85 films projected onto hanging screens. The films clips from classic Italian films collectively evoked for me half-forgotten memories of my youth,

TEXT BY NEIL GILLEPIE

“All these moments will be lost in time, like tears in the rain’’ Roy Batty, Bladerunner, 1982

2 BUILDING SCOTLAND

a time of innocence, of the beautiful Brigitte Bardot walking on the roof of the equally beautiful Villa Malaparte in the film Contempt of 1963. The villa itself exits somewhere between antiquity and the modern, a structure whose form is both past and future, a work of architecture.

The neglected

My hope in visiting the national pavilions was that I would discover architects that were unknown to me. Happily many of the national pavilions did present talents that although vital to an architectural history of that country had failed to be registered globally. The absorption of modernity as a global language that Koolhaas refers to was evident yet in contrast to his pessimism about a loss of local expression or accent it was also clear from the national pavilions that they each had their own voice. I noted names like Ruy Ohtake of Brazil, Severiano Porto of Brazil, Lucio Costa of Brazil, Eduardo De Almeida of Brazil, Ernest Weismann of Croatia, Ivan Vitic of Croatia, Matija salaj of Croatia, Luigi Caccia Dominioni of Italy to name a very few. In the past the world of publishing was responsible for the rise of an architect or the sign of their significance, some were feted while others were not. Today the immediacy and world wide coverage of digital media make it simple to circulate ideas and images. This very immediacy however can devalue work, promoting buildings and architects prematurely. The popularity of the digital has sent tremors through the traditional forms of print. This has caused a polarizing of production, the digital momentary sound bite and the lavishly produced limited edition. Architecture too feels as if it is polarized into the world of the star architect and those who merely service the building industry. Architects are employed by contractors to produce the minimum of standards that will meet the requirements of user

groups, in old fashioned terms, clients. Architecture itself is fast becoming a niche profession. The printed work however remains and to survive has settled into a series of types. Mainstream commercial publishers e.g. Taschen, stick to established global names, producing coffee table books of increasing scale. Others, like El Croquis, restrict themselves to a stable of bestsellers and produce volume after volume that document the chosen few’s every building i.e. Siza, Holl, Chipperfield, Herzog de Meuron etc. While specialist publishers like Lars Muller, Park Books seek out the marginal, the unsung, and present their work in beautiful tactile publications which sell to a small informed audience, recent publications include Alberto Ponis in Sardinia, Park Books and Maria Giuseppina Grasso Cannizzo in Sicily, Lars Muller. Publishing and research within architecture schools is producing notable success in revealing previously unheard voices. This is probably due in part as a response to the need for research to be pursued as a way of increasing funding. It is also to do with the influence of important practitioners who look to our immediate past as a way of developing their own personal architecture. Professor Adam Caruso’s research at ETH Zurich for example through in-house publisher gta verlag has produced volumes on Asagno Vender, Milan and Ferdinand Pouillon, France.

What is the value of a balcony?

We asked each group, literally and metaphorically on the back of each newspaper, to list a number of questions they had which either sprang from their recent research or from their experience of current practice. These questions express the need to continue the debate beyond the Biennale. What have we explored through the theme of Absorbing Modernity? Can we say that we have a

culture, cultivated through an intelligent conversation that can be exposed at this level? Should Scotland continue to have a presence at the Venice Architectural Biennale? I was asked recently by clients, who on major projects under current procurement strategies are contractors, in a so called value engineering meeting, i.e. cost cutting, “what is the value of a balcony?” It seemed to me at the time to epitomize a culture that is based on the expedient, the make do. There is no sense of a modernist culture that was based on improvement of the human condition.In today’s architectural profession there is little in the way of shared goal, no universal desire to improve the lot of the individual. There may only be a desire to prosper financially or to express an selfish individual view of the world. The architects of the 1950's and early 1960’s had a shared vision, returning as many of them had from a world war. They had a collective belief in architecture as a tool within the political and social landscape to improve society. We need to participate, we need to debate; we need to expand our horizons to experience the work of others. We have the rhetoric of an architectural policy but we have no real architectural culture. If we are to see ourselves clearly, to gauge our own architectural culture which is influenced enormously by the health of our architectural schools or otherwise, the vision and intelligence of our professional institutions or otherwise, the procurement policy of our increasingly devolved Government we must, as Reiach and Hurd urged seventy years ago, seek out the best practice of our times always with an eye on our own past.

PAST + FUTURE 3

How can we safeguard yesterday in the name of

tomorrow? Several generations of Scots were

educated, housed and worked in modernist buildings

that have been demolished - How is our memory

and sense of the present affected when we demolish

our past? What is the balance between opinion and

critical analysis when we assess buildings? Some

spatial forms are more enjoyable than others - but

how much can we dissociate architecture from the

social reality of its existence? Has architecture ever

cured a social ill? Who will write the books about

Womersley, Kininmonth, Alison and Hutchison?

Scotland+ Venice

PAST + FUTUREBEING THERETHE FIERCE AND BEAUTIFUL WORLD

It used to be possible to visit the Giardini in an even year, when the Biennale wasn’t on. I first visited in 1992, the pavilions were closed and the place had an air of solitude that was welcome after the densely packed crowds along the waterfront. Rustling leaves covered the ground and it was hard to imagine the hundreds of thousands of feet that would walk along the paths at the following year’s Biennale. To my surprise the oval canopy to Scarpa’s entry kiosk was lying damaged on the ground, metres away from the broken kiosk, which had been used as a toilet. Next, the Nordic Pavilion, the architectural star of the show, had its windows boarded up as if to withstand a siege. Further in, Stirling’s book pavilion had been graffitied with various tags and a love

heart. The garden had an eery feel, like a shipwreck - you didn’t want to be there when it got dark. The Brazilian Pavilion had been broken in to, a door leaf was missing - my curiosity excited, I entered to find a group of young men having a wee party involving needles. They asked if I would care to join them? Embarrassed, my heart beating like a hammer, I sharply turned away, exited the Giardini, and with a sense of relief, diasppeared back into crowds of Venice.

Twenty two years later I returned as a member of Scotland’s ‘exhibition entry’ to the Biennale.

The Venice Art Biennale began life in the late 19th century, towards the end of ‘the age

of nationalism’ that culminated in WW1. Scottish Nationalism had not yet emerged as a force (that happened in the 1920’s and to a greater extent in the ‘60s), but the number of Scottish artists represented was disproportionately large in the early years of the Biennale. The architecture Biennale started in 1981 and the ‘sub-nations of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland were allowed their own ‘collateral’ exhibitions from 2003.

The current situation allows us to express our ‘dual ethnic consciousness’1 - Just as we have our own legal, church and institutional forms of civil society, sheltering under the British umbrella, so the sub-national Scottish exhibition is allowed out to play in the lee of the British Pavilion.

SCOTTISH PAVILION

Nordic Pavilion, 1992 Book Pavilion, 1992 Brazilian Pavilion, 1992

Venezuelan Scottish Pavilion by Scarpa, 2016

TEXT BY JIM GRIMLEY

6 BEING THERE - THE FIERCE AND BEAUTIFUL WORLD

On September 27th 2014 our team arrived at the Giardini to find our exhibition space tucked away in the foyer to the basement of the British Pavilion. Worried that no-one would find us, we relocated to a shaded spot outside, to the right hand side of the British Pavilion, edging towards the French. We brought out a table and some chairs and waited for the guests we hoped would arrive.

Guest number one was an architect from London called Jeremy, dressed all in black with wavy black hair. We told him we were the Scottish Pavilion, “bloody brilliant!” he exclaimed, ‘better than that crap in there’ he said glancing over his shoulder. We explained the project and the conversation quickly followed what was to become a familiar course - Why hadn’t Scotland voted for independence? A comment written on the first page of our visitors book simply states ‘keep on fighting!’ Scotland narrowly missed an opportunity to gain independence from the UK in September 2014, and although that in itself formed the basis of many other discussions, we speculated on what might have happened at future Biennales, had Scotland decided to go it alone. Would we have a real pavilion?

Although no direct parallels can be drawn with other coutries - Venezuela, Uruguay and Finland, who already have pavilions, are of interest.

During a conversation with a professor the Università Iuav di Venezia we joked about the idea of an independent Scotland taking over the Venezuelan Pavilion. In 2014 Biennale their pavilion was closed, being considered unsafe for visitors. In a particularly digital age cock-up, we heard the story of some covert visitors, who had sneaked their way in, taken photographs and published them online - which were then viewed by the not impressed Venezuelans. Consequently, access, for us was impossible. Pity - it’s a great building – Scarpa’s signature windows dematerialising the junction of the roof and the wall, pebble aggregate concrete

and exquisite detailing providing an opulent modesty. It’s confident, self-contained and in a bit of a state. With global oil prices tumbling, perhaps the Venezuelans would be prepared to sell the pavilion, or could we share it or lease it, or in an act of Scottish architectural imperialism, just occupy it?

Venezuela, current population 30.41m, took advantage of Spanish over-expenditure in the Napoleonic Wars and declared itself independent from in 1811 and finally became a country in its own right in 1830. It now has an economic reliance on offshore oil and gas, and a political scene, until recently, dominated by one very strong personality. But why was their pavilion designed by Carlo Scarpa? Surely they could have asked Carlos Raúl Villanueva, the father of modern architecture in Venezuela (although born in Croyden, Surrey!) to design it for them?

Finland – current population 5.4m, took advantage of the Russian Revolution and declared itself independent in 1917. They then had a civil war followed by a couple of decades of peace and the production of a lot of world class modern architecture. Later, they fought the Russians again and finally the Germans during towards the end of WW2. But before all that, from the late 19th century onwards, the Finns frequently selected their architects through open design competitions, a process that became a tradition. There was no competition to find the designer of their 1956 Pavilion – Aalto was handed the commission by his influential friends. The choice must have been was easy - Aalto was peaking in the 1950’s - think Saynatsalo Town Hall, his summer house, the House of Culture, etc etc etc. His pavilion is modest, small and phenomenal. We don’t have an Aalto, but we could learn from Finland’s tradition of selecting designers through competitions that don’t involve HubCo’s, NPD’s, PFI or any other profit seeking shareholders.

Where should a Scottish pavilion situate

itself? Along a formal avenue beside Britain or Denmark or set irregularly to the main arteries more like Hungary?

Uruguay’s pavilion is tucked away, off axis. It’s a simple, well-proportioned room with a door leading in - all that‘s required. The fact its author is unknown adds to its charm. Uruguay – ruled by Portugal, Spain, then Brazillian Portuguese, and finally independent with help from Argentina in the 1820’s has a population of 3.3m, half of whom live in Montevideo. Their exhibition of unknown (to the author) works, provided a highlight of the Biennale.

Josef Hoffmann’s prototypical, Austrian Pavilion of 1934 houses an exhibition that graphically engages with the issue of the appropriate architectural form with which a country may choose to represent itself. The exhibition contains 200 scaled models of national parliament buildings from across the world, covering architectural expressions from the most overblown to the humblest. Where would Scotland like to be positioned amongst a collection of pavilions? What would we want our pavilion to express? Firmitas, utilitas, venustas, sure, but also humility and grace? Venice is a prime example the role of Architecture as the ‘..ars demostrativa of political wisdom and institutional solidity,...the work of the good architect, who is capable of giving eloquent form to the “wisdom” of institutions.’2. But which architect could do so for a Scottish Pavilion? – imagine the scramble of a ‘jealously of architects’3 falling over each other trying win the project.

How about a simple, unpretentious room or two, well made and with the ability to admit lots of top-light, on the main drag, maybe set back a little? Or even better – Venezuela’s one.

Finnish Pavilion, 2014 Austrian Pavilion, 2014 Ready made cast concrete saltire on the Venezuelan Pavilion, 2014

Notes. 1. Neil Davidson – The Origins of Scottish Nationhood p201.2. Manfredo Tafuri – Venice and the Rennaisance, p107.3. Phrase coined by Richard Murphy

PAST + FUTURE 7

House in Erfert - deckert mester architekten

During our time as the custodians of the Scottish Pavilion, a question we asked our numerous visitors was “who are the unsung architectural heroes or buildings from your place that we should know about?”

Architects from Treviso suggested we visit two abandoned buildings on the outskirts of Padua; the Seminary in Tencarola by Oscar Marchi 1970 and the Foro Boario by Giuseppe Davanzo 1968. The seminary was abandoned after a ‘crisi delle vocazioni’ affected numbers of prospective priests. Since then it has been home to illegal immigrants and the homeless who are occasionally ejected by the authorities. The seminary is threatened with demolition and a collection of academics, artists and architects have appealed to the local authorities and the Bishop of Padua to prevent the site being sold to a commercial developer who intends to build new housing and a shopping mall on the site. The

local press has reported stories of ‘vast unpaid tax bills’, ‘corporate lobbying to have the local plan amended’ and ‘populist animosity against development’. Suggestions for the uses for the buildings have included housing, student housing or even a prison.

The Foro Boario, another building that was only used for a few years, is an enormous (45,000 square metres) cellular concrete structure that housed a local cattle market. Giuseppe Davanzo won the design competition in 1964 and the complex was complete by 1968. It’s constructed from thousands of repeated prefabricated concrete elements, like a Jørn Utzon ‘additive’ project on steroids. What to do with this huge structure is now a problem for the local authorities – it’s difficult to access and is of a form that does can’t be easily re-used.

A professor and his colleague from Erfurt in Germany told us they were the architects we

should look at. A quick internet search showed they were to be taken seriously. www.dmarchitekten.de/

Another good encounter was with Local Architecture from Lausanne; www.localarchitecture.ch/ .

The main reason for going to the Biennale is look at Architecture, but fatigue sets in after a couple of hours – there’s much too much to consume. So finding something new, a design or project that resonates with our current thoughts, or a seam of architectural works that intrigues and inspires, becomes a mission.

Amongst the highlights were; a photograph of conceptually stunning Pelota Court in the Spanish Pavilion, dozens of photographs of ‘Unwritten’ about buildings in Latvia’s exhibition in the Arsenale and best of all – a modest and precisely assembled exhibition in Uruguayan Pavilion that makes a research trip to Montevideo seem pressing.

ENCOUNTERS

Disused Seminary, Tencarola, Padua - Oscar Marchi, 1970

Recoletos Pelota Court - Secundino Zuazo, Eduardo Torroja, 1935-36

Foro Boario: a disused cattle market, Padua, Giuseppe Davanzo,1968

TEXT BY JIM GRIMLEY

House in Erfert - deckett mester architekten

Swiss Embassy, Abidjan - Local Architecture, 2014

‘Paths’ - drawing by Justin Serralta, 1944 in the Uruguayan Pavilion

8 BEING THERE - THE FIERCE AND BEAUTIFUL WORLD

In reflecting on my time spent in Venice in October 2014 I find that its most memorable aspect is not, as I had expected and probably hoped, a selection of hitherto unknown architectural gems exposed to me by excitingly esoteric curating policies. The results are much more general, harder to pin down and invested with an unavoidably heavy dose of national identity. As an observer much more used to the experience of the art biennale, I was surprised by the extent to which one could discern what might be held as defining characteristics emerging from participating nations’ contributions. Sure, the cultural mores and preoccupations of each country often seep, whether consciously or unbidden, into the work of the artists who exhibit in the Giardini and beyond, but this seemed like something a bit more structural.

Maybe it was a result of Rem Koolhaas’s stipulation that nations consider their place within the previous century’s architectural history, or maybe that’s just what happens when a brief is so apparently open that a majority default to what are considered certainties. Nonetheless, it was a peculiar experience for a relative outsider such as myself to see what in all likelihood amounted to national stereotypes paraded so freely.

The German pavilion with its bloodless yet diagrammatically conflicting replica of the Chancellor’s Bonn bungalow. The deceptively open, beguiling but ultimately worthy contents of the Nordic pavilion (no one else was taking on their colonial past so the Scandinavians reflected it back at us all through an analysis of their little know African enterprises). Brazil presented a vast chronologically arranged array of wonderful buildings that soon degenerated into so much richly visual static. America was a softly air conditioned archive of commerce past where I enjoyed most the file on Morris Lapidus. One can only imagine the Russian project, a spoof trade fair, was formulated with a sense of ironic self-knowledge but after a couple of minutes exposure it seemed out of control and borderline-psychotic. Was all of this really just grimly inevitable caricature or did the problem lie with me, with my worldview?

Standing out beyond all these examples and more, however, was the stark contrast I felt when moving from the British pavilion to the French. FAT’s presentation at the former troubled me. I couldn’t quite put my finger on why; it presented (with an unusual grace for this Biennale that bordered on slickness) many buildings, ideas and artifacts in which I have a great interest. It folded in some kitsch, some literary and musical references and some rhetorical sculptural form for good measure. Any UK-based, maybe even Northern European, architect would know all this stuff, as might a half-informed lay-person such as myself. I should have left feeling a wee bit smug that it was all so familiar, maybe I really do know the territory from whence I come.

But I didn’t feel good as I passed those Milton Keynesian cows. Now how did the French make such an engaging presentation from, again, such customary fare? Prouvé, Mon Oncle, Drancy. We know all this, right? But the looped film cut together from black and white archive footage, it has Prouvé drawing at a large scale for a lecture audience and it’s as captivating and as modestly human as Bakema’s wife’s reminiscences in an otherwise rather underwhelming Dutch pavilion. That’s what

it is! It’s open and alive, still exhibiting the potential to be learned from, both in positive and negative terms. Of course. Britain did what it does best; it packaged the past neatly and succinctly, leaving just a hint of grit in the mix to suggest authenticity, and rounded off the edges to make a funky lozenge. Easy to swallow: next stop the Visitor Centre for Modernism.*

PASTICHE OR PALIMPSEST

Prouve - drawing whilst lecturing

Sia Bakema reminisces in an otherwise underwhelming Dutch Pavilion

Ruy Ohtake - Tomie Ohtake House, Sao Paolo

Seminario, Montevideo, Uruguay - Mario Payssé Reyes, Enrique Monestier, Walter Chappe, 1954-58

House in Punta del Este, Uruguay - Guillermo Gomez Platero and Rodolfo Lopez Rey, 1962.

TEXT BY TOBY PATERSON

So what does this mean for those of us exposed to the experience of an almost entirely notional Scottish Pavilion? The buildings our team looked at may be some way off from accession to any Postwar Pantheon, but we should be careful what we wish for. That public taste is changing is undoubtable, look at any Sunday broadsheet’s style section or the recent blanket coverage of the potential future of GKC’s St Peter’s seminary. This is demographic. A generational roll-over is occurring and eventually the destruction of swathes of Post War building will slow to a standstill. Welfare State Brutalism will sit with the Victorian and the Georgian, a shift in popular taste will usher in a whole new set of stunted, default opinions about buildings and their contexts. The real question, beyond that of how much will actually physically be left for future

generations to contemplate, is whether a nuanced and clear-eyed reading of the period can yield anything of imaginative or practical value in any future present. If the packaging of it in nostalgic heritage terms prevails and the flaws, politics and sadnesses involved are lost, only those who can pay £700,000 for a flat in Trellick Tower will have won.

So how might Scotland present itself to the architectural world in future? Will it resort to a caricature of itself worthy of the opening ceremony of a major international sporting event? Would it bring with it the the baggage of historical prejudice that seems nigh on impossible to avoid when pursuing a policy of self-conscious Internationalism?

If the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale offered any clue as to the correct spirit with which we might proceed in relation to the vexed question of our own recent architectural history, it was to be found in genuinely unexpected places like the pavilion of Uruguay. Modest in terms of scale and execution, this presentation nevertheless drew us in. It managed to convey the shape and scope of a loosely defined national project, teasing out references to some of its prime movers without bombast and succeeding in

introducing personal perspectives which were quietly touching. A charged atmosphere was established that evoked a time and place more eloquently than any number of supergraphics, crisp-edged models or meta-curatorial strategies ever could. If Aldo van Eyck was right when he stated that “whatever space and time mean, place and occasion mean more” then this kind of undemonstrative yet engaging approach might just prove to be a culturally apt touchstone for any nascent Scottish pavilion tasked with pondering its past whilst facing its future.

* Credit where it’s due to Chris Lowry

PAST + FUTURE 9

What is the true legacy of the 20th Century Modernists in

Glasgow and what lessons do they offer for contemporary

architects working in the city? How can Glasgow re-engage

with its modernist architectural legacy? How did Glasgow’s 19th

Century urban grid condition the modernist interventions in

the 20th Century? What is the impact of Glasgow’s topography

on Glasgow’s modern buildings? What were the motivations

that drove Glasgow’s buildings upwards in the middle of the

20thC? How can Glasgow exploit the ‘residual’ spaces created

by modernist planning? What was the impact of the 1938 Empire

Exhibition on Glasgow’s modernist buildings? Is the base and

tower typology an appropriate response to Glasgow’s urban

grid? What is the significance of MacMillan and Metzstein’s sole

urban contribution to the Glasgow grid? Why is Peter Williams

the architect of Glasgow’s major modernist buildings unknown?

Who is the architect who dared ’tango’ with Thomson? What is

the impact of the Glasgow grid on Mackintosh’s and Holls work

at GSA? Who was the man behind the Bruce plan? What is the

impact of the architectural legacies of Abercrombie and Bruce on

Glasgow in the 21st Century? What is the architectural legacy of

Glasgow’s schools of architecture?

Scotland+ Venice

PAST + FUTUREEMBEDDED MODERNISM

Venice and Glasgow are remarkable survivors of the vicissitudes of time and decay, both weathering environmental challenges and changing political inclinations. All the more remarkable, then, is that their survival celebrates variations of a similar idealised idea of urban living. As overbuilt island and overlaid development grid, they can be seen as armatures or archetypal settings for urban form - settings in which the original topography is sublimated to the built idea. Venice’s man-made makeover of its sandbanks, sitting isolated in its lagoon and under its blue sky, epitomises the civility of intense urban life within an ever-present aqueous frame. Glasgow, on the other hand, whilst stretching into its rolling hinterland under greyer skies, has as its heart a universal grid, draped relentlessly across this topography. In both cases the abstract framework for building development and urban form has become the platform for an urban sensibility rooted in a European classical building typology.

Neil Gillespie’s vision, superbly managed by his colleague Laura Kinnaird, for this year’s Scottish contribution to the Venice Biennale adopted a similar ‘abstract’ template. Envisaged not in the traditional sense, in the form of a physical pavilion or exhibition enclosure around a theme, it has instead been conceived as a ‘carrier’ of the theme - like the draped and overbuilt island - in the form of a newspaper.

Dividing Scotland geographically, along north-south/east-west lines, this curatorial team asked various groups associated with university architecture departments, to explore and contribute content to newspapers on the theme of the event, with the aim of uncovering the hidden contribution of a century of modern architectural thinking. In that respect, for the group from the west, there seemed no better place to start to explore these ideas than the potential of these exceptional templates, with Glasgow as focal subject.

The team consisted of Alan Hooper, Jamie Whelan, Chris Dove with David Page, Andrew Frame and Fraser Maitland representing Glasgow School of Art and Strathclyde University respectively, and supported by the historian Miles Glendinning from Edinburgh University. They excavated the little-discussed history of the absorption of modernism into the historic fabric of Glasgow city centre, and, in particular, its abstract gridded heart.

Contrary to the comprehensive ‘renewal through demolition’ strategies that prevailed in Glasgow’s inner suburbs, an apparently subtle and cohesive alternative emerged in the city core during the postwar years. Whilst much 20th century modernist visioning envisaged a clean slate, a rhetorical tactic adopted, for example, by the 1945 ‘Bruce Plan’ - the inner city was thankfully spared this treatment. Instead, the application of an interweave of methodologies helped dissolve this isolationist modernist stance.

The group’s identification of this stance, which they termed ‘embedded modernism’ – a concept that the new and old can coexist - paralleled the aspiration for an ‘embedded programme’ for the Scottish contribution in the existing garden of the Biennale. In broad contextual

terms, the main Biennale event is a sequence of pavilions and exhibitions within that garden, featuring extreme contrasts such as those between the Canadian Arctic and the desert settlements of the Israeli pavilion, between Switzerland and Belgian abstraction, between German sobriety and French enthusiasms, or between Danish poetry and Austrian typology. Each in its own way reflects a kind of orthodoxy, an accepted national position, distinctive and clear, and set out to be viewed in silence – other than for watchful invigilators and occasional amplified sound to make the visitor feel less lonely.

Rem Koolhaas, as curator of the formal rather than national part of the show, recognised the dilemma stemming from the absence of real voices by imagining a programme of performance, music and dance interweaving with the Arsenale displays. It was this idea that the Scottish contribution subscribed to. It asked: could the Scottish contribution be real voices, in the shadow of the harvest of the avant-garde of the British Show? The latter displays a geographical neutrality, its focus the generalist movements that shaped and influenced an age. The Scottish Pavilion adds a geographical movement, not with in the show itself but distinct from it, outside in the garden of the Biennale itself.

The key idea here is that in parallel to each official show there should be another voice, real rather than mechanical. With increasing centralisation of production, management and political activity, the need for the means to voice and hear alternatives assumes a new value. The

idea of a platform for the contributors to ‘sell’ and talk to their newspapers offered this voice in this pop-up annex to the official setting in an immediate, transient, exploratory, disposable form, augmented here by Frame and Maitland’s ‘new-stand’.

This embryonic satellite concept embodied in the ‘newspaper pavilion’ challenges the idea of a circumscribed national boundary defining architectural production. In a sense, the national state struggling with transnational political economy and at the same time with its own internal dialogues needs to embrace a new openness. Neil Gillespie’s exploration of the outside territory - the glue between - the national stances gives an exciting dimension to the remaking of the Biennale.

In that respect Neil has done the Biennale a great service, as, rather than a doctrinaire Scottish national position, his model advocates a modest variation on the idea of an official event – paralleling the world event of his home city - the idea of the Scottish contribution as a ‘fringe’ to the official festival. The overbuilt islands of the Venice lagoon, the Glasgow Grid and the disseminating power of the newspaper, therefore, in reflecting individual and broadly ‘universal’ contributions to the idea of contemporary urban life, are conceptual ‘emissaries’ to the future. Outside in the Biennale Garden we see them for what they are, a ‘fringe’ provocation to our conscience, urging us to treat them well.

Scotland’s residency at the British Pavilion was supported by the British Council, Creative Scotland and the Scottish Government.

VENICE - REFLECTIONS

The Group 02 Newspaper Stand.

12 EMBEDDED MODERNISM

Impact: The primary motivation for our selection of Glasgow as the subject of our newspaper was that our work should make a difference, change perceptions, have impact. At the outset we rejected the notion of modernism as a matter of isolated object buildings, manifest in the pristine ideal villa or the sanitised sanatorium. Our working title, Embedded Modernity, promoted the idea of an pre-existing entity, Glasgow’s urban grid, within which modernity, both as idea and fabric, could be located, tested, and realised. We were interested in how modernism was conditioned by the demands of Glasgow’s Victorian gridded urban core. Implicit in our title was the rejection of the individual, both architect and building, and the promotion of the collective, a view of the city as a continuum and a manifestation of hopes and failures over a sustained period of time. Whilst we selected exemplary case study buildings our selection criteria were concerned with the quality of the urban response to the local

conditions rather than the merits of the building as a single entity, essentially the positive contribution of the building to the urban collective. Architect, writer and teacher Vittorio Lampugnani defines such a continuum as ‘tradition’, within which, in each period, architects ‘working in good conscience’ reflect both the past and contemporary situations in their work.

Our engagement and presentation of urban utopias within our newspaper explored an extreme version of the architectural collective: the singular utopian vision of the urban collective, offering a stark contrast with reality of the Glasgow’s urban collective of successive plans and visions, each melding and distorting the previous ‘version’ of the city. On reflection the richness, diversity and contradictions expressed within Glasgow’s built collective, realised over centuries, amplify the fundamental problem with utopian myopic visions, namely the very lack of variety and competing demands found in cities such as Glasgow. We adopted the position that contemporary Glasgow expresses an overlay of utopian intentions from the new town plans of the 18th and 19th centuries, grafted on to the original city settlement, to the modernist vision of the city expressed in the Bruce Plan in the mid 20th century. As such our mid-century modernist case study buildings were regarded as partial utopias, fragments of Bruce’s un-realised classico-modernist vision of Glasgow, emphasizing their collective conception rather than their individual attributes. Indeed, we argued that the transformation and adaptation of these ‘partial utopias’ to embed them within an alternative vision of the city, the Victorian gridded core, improved the buildings and assured their survival in a period when Glasgow is in the process of wholesale demolition of modernist tower blocks. As such we offered an inversion of Koolhaas’s Biennale theme, transforming his ‘Absorbing Modernity’ into an exploration of ‘Modernity Absorbing’; modernism’s absorption of the previous incantations of the city, with our case studies demonstrating an urban nuance not generally associated with modernist buildings.

In order to promote both the conceptual clarity and urban credentials of our selected buildings we sought to redeem them from the banality of their current state. Whist acknowledging the individual technical shortcomings of their realization and insensitive custodianship over their lifespan, we presented them in their pristine conceptualized state, in the form of idealised drawings and photographs. The primary intention was to shift the common perception of such buildings as failures, and to engage in a discourse which recast them as potential models for future work in the city, not in terms of their technical and material choices but in their response and contribution to the urban collective.

Urban Intersection: People, Process and Place Our Venetian experiences and subsequent return to our home city have focused our thoughts on three distinct areas of action.

Action 01 People: Recollections of the Biennale are filled with the conversations we had with the visitors to our ‘new-stand’ within the Giardini. In most Biennale pavilions the exhibitions do not offer direct access to the authors of the work. In our experience the direct dialogue between author and visitor is a reciprocal arrangement very much appreciated by both parties, perhaps evidencing the value of personal encounter at a time when we are increasingly communicating by digital and remote means. As such the first action instigated by our post-Venice reflections is to reprise our ‘news-stand’ in Glasgow, exchanging the tranquility of the Giardini for the commercial bustle of Glasgow’s foremost shopping ‘destination’, Buchanan Street. The intention is to engage directly with the people of Glasgow, building on our experiences of direct engagement with the public in Venice, albeit a select public of cultural tourists. During last year’s independence referendum Buchanan Street was transformed into an agora, a public forum charged by political debate, so it will be interesting to probe the legacy of Scotland’s recent immersion in politics by attempting to engage the public with the very fabric of their city. The proposed event acknowledges another strand of our Venetian conversations, those with local experts who hold

an informed external view of Glasgow. Accordingly, Professor Renato Bocchi and his student Nicola Rossolo have been invited to join us on the frontline, our ‘new-stand’ in Buchanan Street, to offer the outsider’s view.

Action 02 Process: The intervention of our invited guest, Miles Glendinning, through his contribution to our event staged in Venice’s Ludoteca, helped re-align our perceptions of both Venice and the role of architects in the shaping of the cities. Miles abruptly cut across our preoccupation with the aestheticism and preciousness of celebrated designers such as Scarpa - author of countless celebrated micro-interventions such as the Olivetti showroom in the arcade of Piazza San Marco - to address the realities of the contemporary forces that shape cities. The forcefulness of his argument transcended both Scarpa and Venice, forcing us to address the uncomfortable truth that for too long architects have been focused on the particular and exquisite at the cost of engaging in the ‘swampy’ processes that often impact negatively on the collective quality of our cities. If architects are to once more become thought leaders rather than simply form makers then they must engage with those parties who shape and implement policy, devise and administrate development control, direct finance and in their actions decide the future of our cities. Of course, architects must always make their special contribution through architecture, through built form, but the profession is equally tasked with creating the conditions in which architecture can flourish. Schools of architecture have a role to play in supporting and developing those graduates who might apply their architectural education to the very processes outlined previously, that create the conditions for an authentic architecture that improves the quality of our urban environments. As such, our curator Neil Gillespie’s implicit creation of a network of Scottish schools of architecture through the Scotland+Venice project must be exploited, as a potential way of stimulating discussions addressing how the Scottish schools of architecture can combine in an effort to inform the processes that shape our towns and cities.

Action 03 Place: Our reflections on place return our focus to the built city, Glasgow, to our notions of continuity and tradition, and our desire to make an impact on the city. If the role of the historian is to identify events and in ‘making’ history, and to separate the past from the present, our role as architects must be to understand the past in order to keep it alive, to engage with the past not as a defined ‘other’ but as contingent with the present, within which we operate. Accordingly our intention in exploring embedded modernity within Glasgow’s Victorian city was to challenge the modernist rhetoric of rejecting the past and the commonly-held view that the modern movement represents a break in the continuity of the traditional European city, and to explore the urban fundamentals that connect rather than separate the various incarnations of Glasgow. Having interrogated selected modernist interventions in Glasgow it is our intention to develop and disseminate our findings by framing them as a call to return to ‘Glasgow Fundamentals’, through a typological study of the urban conditions and exemplary urban responses evidenced in Glasgow’s urban core. The first issue of Glasgow Fundamentals will be based on the premise that geology is the foundation of the city and will explore the relationship of Glasgow’s built form to its urban topography from street level to skyline. We have devised three conditions that elicit responses to the fundamental relationship of buildings to the ground: BELOW, ON and ABOVE.

BELOW explores buildings in Glasgow that emerge from below pavement level, generally those built on sloping ground and addressing the challenge of connecting level floors with sloping streets. ON explores those buildings that rise from the pavement and are built on level ground. ABOVE explores those buildings that employ tactics to rise above the pavement either through forceful plinth-like elements or through acts of architectural levitation employing an array of stilts, platforms and pilotis.

Watch this SPACE!

GLASGOW -ACTION

BELOIW

ON

ABOVE

PAST + FUTURE 13

VENICE - DOCUMENTATION

Photographic Archive of Team 02’s physical presence in Venice.

14 EMBEDDED MODERNISM

GLASGOW - COLLABORATIONIn the early sixties, a young Renato Bocchi was dispatched to Glasgow by his teacher, the late great Manfredo Tafuri. Bocchi arrived in smog-filled Glasgow, met Andy MacMillan, and things developed from there - resulting in Bocchi’s 1970s thesis on his adopted city. In turn Prof Bocchi dispatched his student, Nicola Russolo, to Glasgow in 2013, to investigate a different city, the reinvented post-industrial city of culture, a transformed Glasgow. Our Venice visit offered the opportunity to rekindle Glasgow’s relationship with Prof Bocchi, which began so long ago. He and Nicola Russolo will give a joint slide show on their Glasgow thesis projects, separated by some four decades but connected by their passion for Glasgow and their Venetian vantage-point. The visit will also offer the opportunity to explore future collaborations between the architecture schools in Venice and Glasgow. The following is an introduction to Nicola Russolo’s Thesis by Alan Hooper:

Speaking in Tongues: A Radical Proposal for Glasgow’s Waterfront

Glasgow made the Clyde and the Clyde made Glasgow, the saying goes. The fortunes of Glasgow and its great waterway have been inextricably linked over centuries. When the Clyde prospered in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, firstly through trade in cotton and tobacco, followed by shipbuilding, the generated wealth built Glasgow’s Victorian city of stone. Equally, the decline of shipbuilding in the early years of the twentieth century was reflected in the subsequent decline and depopulation of the city core in the latter half of the century. Once the city’s industrial artery, the Clyde is, today, reimagined as a component in Glasgow’s post-industrial renaissance as a city of culture. In terms of Glasgow’s urban fabric the question remains, how does Glasgow repair the riverside territories vacated by heavy engineering infrastructure? The key issue is scale, for the post-industrial sites along the river are of such a magnitude and multitude that urban infill is not a viable strategy and urban reconstruction is required. This is the context to which the following research is addressed. In attempting to answer this question our author, the Venetian ‘outsider’ seeks to speak with a Glasgow tongue, through the unpacking of Glasgow’s ‘historical baggage’. The result is neither pastiche nor architectural ventriloquism, but, rather, a radical conservatism in search of an authentic urban response, eliciting a lineage that stretches back to the urban concerns of his teacher’s teacher, Manfredo Tafuri. As a native of Glasgow I welcome the care, concern and detailed attention given to the ‘place’ I call home, and for the sincerity with which the work has been conducted.

Renato Bocchi (Trento, 1949), is professor of architectural and urban design at the Iuav University of Venice, Architecture and Arts Department; the main field of his research are the relationships through art, architecture, city and landscape.

Nicola Russolo (Motta di Livenza, 1989), studied Architecture for Landscape and Sustainable Design at Iuav University of Venice. He graduated in 2014 with a thesis on Glasgow’s Clydefront, after an Erasmus experience at Strathclyde University in 2012-2013.

Venice+Scotland Group 02 January 2015

A project for the central area of Glasgow - Renato Bocchi, 1973.

Reinventing Clydefront - Nicola Russolo, 2014.

PAST + FUTURE 15

Reconnaissance 5 Outlook + Enquiry. In 1915

Patrick Geddes’s seminal work - Cities in

Evolution - was first published. As its centenary

approaches the opportunity to begin revisiting and

reinterpreting this study of cities within the theme

of ‘fundamentals’ is timely. Land Works will begin

this pilgrimage in a gathering place where ideas and

aspirations are explored and exchanged through an

interdisciplinary and international forum of open

dialogue - as Lewis Mumford said ....‘(Geddes’)

Scotland embraced Europe and his Europe

embraced the world.’ Team 03 Fieldwork will be

continued in Venice under the following : Seeking

Anonymity - there is? is there? - The Betrayal of

Geddes

Scotland+ Venice

PAST + FUTURELAND WORKS

BY HAND

We transcribe the subject as landform to establish its territory.

18 LANDWORKS

BY EYE

We observe the subject as landform to affirm its space in time.

PAST + FUTURE 19

GROUP 03 PAGES20 LANDWORKS

GROUP 03 PAGES

BY THOUGHT

We reflect on the subject as alternative landform, discover a continuum in-between Past + Future - the Present.

ITS MODERNITY IS REVEALED

PAST + FUTURE 21

To what extent can the historic projects and

theories discussed in this paper act as a provocation

for architects working today? To what extent was

tradition and technology reconciled? How did the

arts and architecture relate to everyday life? How

did populist consumerism square with postwar

austerity? In what ways can lessons be learnt from

the strength of conviction and collective social

purpose of the postwar modernists? The Modern

Masters were rigorous, highly independent and

wilful individuals with a strong sense of agency.

Are these qualities desirable in contemporary

architects? What are the core principles – formal,

typological, conceptual, intellectual – of the discipline

of architecture? To what extent can the development

of a coherent formal vocabulary allow us to move

beyond the current architectural impasse?

Scotland+ Venice

PAST + FUTUREOUTSIDERS

In October 2014 we invited three guests to Venice to give talks related to the buildings we showcased in the Scotland + Venice paper devoted to the north-east of Scotland. Our case studies buildings were designed by James Stirling, Alison + Peter Smithson and Michael Shewan - a devotee of Mies van der Rohe. Emmanuel Petit, Dirk van den Heuvel and Sven-Olov Wallenstein were asked to talk about Stirling, The Smithson’s and Mies. The event was called ‘Outsiders’. Before the lectures we sat down to discuss these architects and the context in which they worked.

THREE INTERVIEWS

From your point of view and the point of view of colleagues and press in the States, how has this year’s Venice Architecture Biennale been received? Without having seen the Biennale yet, it is quite dangerous to say anything. But we know that Koolhaas has a complex relation toward the notion of disciplinarity; for that reason I have the feeling that he is going to tease many architects by saying that everything that has been defined as the discipline of architecture is arcane and complicated and that things can be easier, fresher and more directly related to real life. But I do not have a problem with mediation - cultural mediation, rhetorical mediation, and with intellectual reflection on the world. Where architecture becomes ‘architecture,’ you never engage reality directly and immediately, but you mediate with all the tools that the discipline of architecture puts at your disposal. They include every cultural notion that you can think of - language, history, criticism, and the like. These are the ways you build and cultivate any discipline. Heidegger, who has unfortunately been too much appropriated by those Postmodernists who highlighted the more cozy or heimlich aspect of his otherwise very tough thought, claimed that in order “to be,” you have to cultivate “being.” I feel that it is not so different with the discipline of architecture. Now, I have the suspicion that the Biennale is saying that architecture can be ‘simpler:’ that a look at the physical elements that go into the construction of buildings can somehow be a proxy for everything architecture is about. Having seen in magazines the photograph of a mechanical piece taken from

Emmanuel Petit is an architect, writer, and teacher. He is editor of ‘Philip Johnson: The Constancy of Change’, which received an Independent Publisher Award, and is the editor of ‘Schlepping through Ambivalence: Writings on an American Architectural Condition’, a book of Stanley Tigerman’s collected essays. Mr. Petit is the author of the book ‘Irony, or, The Self-Critical Opacity of Postmodern Architecture’, for which he received a grant from the Graham Foundation. Recently published texts include ‘The Architecture of Irony’ in the Victoria & Albert Museum’s catalogue for the exhibition ‘Postmodernism: Style and Subversion, 1970 to 1990’ and ‘Incubation and Decay: Arata Isozaki’s Architectural Poetics: Metabolism’s Dialogical Other’ in Perspecta 41. He curated the 2010–11 exhibition ‘An Architect’s Legacy: James Stirling’s Students at Yale, 1959–83’, and co-curated Peter Eisenman’s exhibition ‘Barefoot on White-Hot Walls’ at the Museum for Applied Art in Vienna in 2004. Petit is partner in the architecture firm Jean Petit Architectes in Luxembourg City and was recently appointed Sir Banister Fletcher Visiting Professor at the Bartlett School of Architecture.

EMMANUEL PETITAN INTERVIEW WITH CAMERON MCEWAN

an escalator and placed in the exhibition, I get a bit worried by this religious trust in the material world. I don’t think the steps of an escalator are going to generate the cultural richness and depth one can rightly expect from architecture. If this was the case, then any trade fair could be seen as a precedent for the Biennale; I do not hope this is the intention. In fact the Biennale was created because there was a feeling that trade shows were not good representations of the aspirations of the profession. But before I go on, I would like to see the exhibition first. Yes, on initial reading it seems like the implication is toward the professionalization of knowledge in architecture, rather than architecture as intellectual reflection. So it’s a slightly paradoxical theme. Let’s turn to Stirling. It is interesting that Stirling has been recently revisited by Amanda Lawrence and Anthony Vidler to name two prominent critics. Why did you feel the need to revisit Stirling’s work, and why Stirling’s students? I’m thinking of the 2011 exhibition you curated at Yale. The Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal acquired the Stirling & Wilford Archive a bit over a decade ago. The CCA together with the Mellon Centre in New Haven asked Vidler to curate a show on the work of Stirling. In this context, the Yale School of Architecture under its dean Robert A.M. Stern decided to do a parallel show on the work of Stirling’s students for the reason that Stirling taught at Yale for twenty-four years. I was interested in Stirling because when I studied in Switzerland, Stirling was virtually the only post-1950 architect we were allowed to talk about. I heard the name ‘Venturi’ maybe once or twice in my six years in Zurich, whereas Stirling was the good guy, the good “postmodernist”… if he was a postmodernist, that is, but I don’t have an issue with that. So I was interested in Stirling anyway because he mastered the balancing act between being considered a modernist and also a postmodernist. He seemed interesting to me. When the opportunity came up to look at the students of Stirling I became interested because it also gave me a way to look at the history of Yale under a whole series of different deanships: starting with Paul Rudolph, who brought Stirling to the States, through Charles Moore, Cesar Pelli and

others. This is a pretty relevant period of Yale history. It also allowed me to look at work that was very Stirling-esque without being Stirling and to therefore help me to understand Stirling himself. What was Stirling’s relationship between his teaching and his practice in London? Was that when James Gowan was a partner? The first time Stirling taught at Yale was in 1959 when Leicester started. Rudolph was completely taken by the Leicester building and decided to invite him to come to the States. Stirling loved to go to America. It gave him all kinds of freedom. He liked this international life of a practice in London and teaching in the States. He would assign projects he was working on at that moment in the office so his studio projects parallel his own career. He would ask students to work on Derby Civic Centre, the Tuscan Government Centre, the Staatsgalerie, Cornell Performing Arts, the Sackler gallery, and many more of those projects he had worked on. These were the project briefs he gave the students? Yes, and he gave a prize at the end to the student who proposed a scheme most like what he might produce - a tie, or a blue shirt! … and then a second prize to the student, who came up with a better solution than his own. But yes, a direct parallel between his practice and his studio teaching existed. How did you distinguish the development of Stirling’s work? Bob Stern wrote to the alumni who studied with Stirling and asked them to send in their work. So we built an archive of Stirling’s students’ work because it did not exist before. The advantage of working with an archive is that you can start with an analysis of the stuff in front of your nose. The work is there, and you work with that. And for me there were breaks that one could easily perceive and trace. These breaks were meaningful because they reflected a change in the architectural discussion in general, and so we divided the exhibition into five different stages. The early work is not terribly Stirling-esque, perhaps because he was more like a casual visitor in the school. That was from 1959 to 1964. The work still looks influenced by then dean Rudolph, but also Louis Kahn and then Kevin Roche - who at that time had completed the Okland … a building that looks like a cascade of terraces built into the ground and to walk on. In Stirling’s studio there was a project that looked exactly like that. In the second half of the 1960s you get the whole Archigram and “English” pop influence. That’s when he was part of the Independent Group. That’s also when he becomes formalised as a Davenport Professor - a Professorship, by the way, which he shared with Robert Venturi. So you get this pop influence. Craig Hodgetts is probably the most famous and idiosyncratic student of Stirling at that time. He is an L.A. architect who also published his projects from the Stirling studio in Archigram. That episode we called “The New City.” You can imagine an

24 OUTSIDERS

architecture out of shipping containers with flashy colours, hovering trains and space ship architecture, and such. Then “Urban Insertions” was the next part of the exhibition and around the time of the Derby Civic Centre. This series of projects dealt with ways to integrate new architecture into the existing city. This is also the period when Léon Krier influenced Stirling. The time from 1977 to 1978, the Tuscan Government Centre episode we called “Architectural Agglomerates” which dealt with speculations about urban figure/ground. This is the exact time when Collage City was published. Giambattista Nolli’s map of the mid eighteenth-century became an important document in architecture discourse at this time, and led up to the Roma Interrotta workshop in which Stirling participated. The last part of the exhibition then we called “Fragmented Monumentality;” these were the late-1970s and early-1980s projects including the Staatsgalerie, the Sackler gallery, and the Cornell Performing Arts Center. All these projects had a sense of monumentality but ‘relativized’ by fragmentation. The notion of monumentality and the theme of “urban insertions” leads me to two questions. The first, to what extent was Stirling an urban architect - an architect interested in the monumentality of singular buildings or an architect interested in urban fabric? And second, does this get to your idea of the “double view” of Stirling? This question of the ‘double view’ of Stirling considers whether Stirling was more interested in the object of architecture, or in the city; because it is over this issue the critics are split. Colquhoun or Frampton didn’t think Stirling did anything valuable after around 1975 when Stirling participated in the Düsseldorf competition with his famous ‘lyrical’ project. This is the moment when Stirling’s turn becomes recognisable. The path through the city becomes the dominant trope in his architecture whereas before, he works with Constructivist objects that acknowledge the context but are in no way contextual in the 1970 Colin Rowe/Cornell sense of the word. Some critics still go on saying that Stirling was a modernist because his most important thematic was the play on typology. But he also clearly shifted toward other interests in the mid-1970s. His later work was as much a play on typology as it was a way to deal with the city. His British buildings are not only Constructivist objects but they also respond to the city; and they certainly do it in a different way than the Staatsgalerie. Do you mean as urban types? Or more abstract geometric types? Both are present in Stirling’s work. There is a shift from one to another. In his early work he does deal with the city, the city block. How you progress through a block, how you walk by an urban wall. The urban aspect is not as pronounced as it would be later. Does this relate to the double view? Can you expand on that? If one wants to understand this double aspect in Stirling, one must look at Auguste Choisy on the one hand, who represented his analysis of Athenian architecture from a worms eye point of view, which for Stirling meant “architecture was flying off into space.” In this view of things, architecture is detached from the ground - the ground as the repository of metaphysics and of historical information. When architecture flies off, all that matters is the intrinsic logic of the object of architecture. And then Giambattista Nolli on the other hand. These are two references that played a major role for Stirling. Unlike Choisy, Nolli is not about the ideality of form, but it is a record of the factuality of the urban texture. So it comes after the fact. It has to do with the here and the now of the city. Stirling could combine both in the same project: this is a paradox Stirling loved to play with. Yes, Choisy is the opposite of Nolli. One represents the object of architecture looking up, the other looks down, one is a singular object the other is a city plan. These opposites are reconciled in Stirling’s work. You could also say that the double aspect haunts more people than only Stirling at that time. Peter Eisenman, for one, in his series of houses in the 1970s are very Choisy-like, although he never represented them as a worms eye view, they are all about the isolation of the object in a white space.

Eisenman then also shifted to other themes, in 1978, with the Cannaregio project which was anti-Nolli, or a Piranesian critique of Nolli. But there you have that double aspect as well. You can also find it in John Hejduk: the Texas houses are isolated objects, but then he turns toward his narrative and poetic architectural stories. There are others too. So Stirling is part of that more general turn of thinking in architecture. Stirling wrote less than the others but has now been picked up and studied by a series of people: Mark Crinson, Tony Vidler, Amanda Lawrence, and Alan Berman. The other aspect of this double view is that it allows Stirling and others to formally de-construct the object into elements or components so that these elements or components can be combined and recombined via drawings and in his following projects. There is this serial or repetitive strategy at work. I like that you use the term ‘elements’ since this is at the notion we now find in the Biennale… only here it has been given a different meaning. Indeed, Stirling has his own ‘autobiographical’ elements - autobiographical in the sense that he invents tropes he later repeats and transforms in new buildings. It is a very witty thing to do, and in fact, tonight I will be making a point about Stirling’s wit. How you create new elements of architecture has everything to do with wit. I will refer to Jean-Luc Nancy’s definition of this notion when he claims that wit is to thinking what dissolution is in alchemy. This is to say that wit has the ability to take everything apart and reassemble in unexpected ways. If you are witty you can see through the logic of objects and recombine them in truly inventive and fresh ways because you are not worried about being too serious, and because you have the intellectual faculty to combine things that are not (logically) combinable. That is the technique Stirling always used. It allowed him to design buildings that look like they could be taken from certain contexts but they are totally fresh because like alchemists he could turn shit into gold! It’s interesting, there is a kind of wilful attitude with Stirling! There is some serious cheekiness in Stirling. Without a doubt! Even in the early work. For example, Leicester is cheeky. You have to have the guts to do what he did with that building on one of those English university campuses where you are probably not even permitted to utter bad words. This is a serious university, a serious campus, in a serious country, and he comes along and designs this weird building. Of course it’s not really funny, but it sure is cheeky and witty. The intellectual strategy is similar later at Düsseldorf or in Stuttgart. In the later work he becomes funnier, but you can only be funny when your position is safe enough that the world will take it. If you are funny without having established yourself you are just out. Funny guys don’t survive. Yet humour is the highest form of the intellect. Everyone manages to be serious, but very few manage to be funny or witty. Leicester is a very serious building so he became very serious, quite quickly which then allowed him the opportunity to become wilful or witty, almost immediately. And he is British. By now the world expects from Brits to be funny and eccentric. Krier is from Luxembourg. A Luxembourger cannot be eccentric and the world does not expect somebody from Luxembourg to be eccentric. So you do it subversively then! Oh I’m of a very different generation, which is part of a global culture where these national differences have eroded and where the rules and expectations have completely changed. But this was not the case in 1971. This was the time when Brits were supposed to be funny. So turning from wit to your book Irony, would you say that wit is a critical category? Because nobody is able to say yes or no, I think that makes it so. Meaning, there are these terms - like wit or irony - that we do not know what to do with because they are beyond what we usually express with logical words. Irony can be funny but it can also be dead serious. That paradoxical simultaneity of such opposite meanings is what attracted me to them. Architecture in my mind is structurally similar

to those terms. It is neither this nor that, it just ‘is.’ And it always goes beyond what we can say about it, yet we have no choice but to keep talking: words are a building material you cannot do without, but they are very fragile and can easily leak; and when your sentences about architecture leak, the client won’t be happy! In Irony you frame the discussion between the dates 1972 and 2001. The former as the demolition of Pruitt Igoe and the latter the destruction of the World Trade Centre. Beyond these events, what is the purpose of this chronology? First of all, the dates are polemical, and I clearly say that in the introduction. I use them to make a point that things can start and end but in fact things don’t start and end that way; it is historiography that orders the past in such a way that stories have a beginning and an end. Jacques Derrida has had a big influence on me, partly because of Eisenman’s and Mark Wigley’s influence. If you read Derrida, it becomes clear that in texts you can never situate beginnings and endings. So if you believe this sort of intellectual ideology, which I do, then you are unable to name dates and know when things are beginning and ending: all you can do is quote someone else’s dates. The world expects a date but I don’t take responsibility for it. So Jencks famously dated the end of modern architecture at 3:32pm on 15th July 1972. I use that date and for the same ridiculous reason I quoted Karl Marx saying that in history things first appear as tragedy and then as parody: in my book, I point out that the same fate happened to the buildings of the same architect - Minoru Yamasaki - but for different reasons: first the Pruitt-Igoe buildings go down, then the World Trade Center. And the fact that irony brought down the Twin Towers was not my claim, but it was what all these journals and newspapers claimed at the time: it was they who claimed that now the Western countries have to get serious again because they sustained their culture on irony. It is a critique of the cultural playfulness of the West: that we need to leave irony behind and move back to seriousness. For me that was an extremely dangerous proposition because there are of course cultures that lack any sense of irony, and you would not want to trust them more than you trust the West! For journalists in the West to say we need to leave irony behind would be the ultimate disaster. Irony has something to do with the Socratic way of living which is fundamental to our way of being. Socratic irony is based on an intellectual self-awareness and modesty which I don’t want to give up. ‘To know that we don’t know’ is to posit systems and critique them at the same time. Postmodernism was all about that… to posit something and then indicate that we are unsure of the metaphysical stability of what we propose. In order to indicate this modesty, architects insinuated that buildings are mere fragments of something that is bigger in the imagination. All those different methods of questioning the perfection of the object which at one time was the request of architecture - that architecture represents perfection. It was only possible to allude to perfection with a sense of irony. Meaning here is the centralised church again, but the dome is cracked. In the Epilogue you say that postmodernism turned architecture into an intellectual discipline. What do you mean by that? I truly think what made the postmodern moment so special and different, was the need to intellectualise everything. Architecture had never seen that before. And today, to just mention an intellectual thought in architecture is seen as suspicious - everything seems to be about computation and fabrication: wherever that will get us! Horace Walpole said the world is a tragedy to those who feel it, a comedy to those who think it. It’s a tragedy to those who feel it because everything becomes so heavy. But if you think it, the world is inevitably funny. At the moment when architecture became so terribly intellectual it also became very funny at times. Postmodernism had very funny moments. That’s the reason I got interested in Stanley Tigerman. He is hilarious, also upsetting, but super cheeky. With him, everything turns very funny. He is also someone who said had he not become an architect he would become a Rabbi. He is someone very interested in metaphysics

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and someone who takes the whole notion of metaphysics seriously but needs to be funny because he could not bear his religious views. The other great intellectual period of architecture is in the 1920s when you have Le Corbusier, Hilberseimer, Mies, Gropius, Loos, whoever, putting forward theories and projects for architecture and the city in designs and in writings. Can these periods be compared? Is a comparison productive? Yes, but that was also a different kind of ‘intellectual.’ And most of the writers from the 1970s who we read and appreciate have something to say about the 1920s. They not only talk about the 1920s but they also appropriate the architecture of the 1920s for their own work. It is difficult to not talk about Le Corbusier. He had the ability and the rhetoric that related to all aspects of culture. The only architect today that can do this is Koolhaas. He is the most zeitgeisty of all living architects. Turning now to the category of project, a category recently reassessed by Eisenman, Pier Vittorio Aureli, Daniel Sherer and others. In an issue of Log you open an essay on MVRDV titled “Projects for the Post-Ironic City” with a definition of “project.” Can you expand on this idea? In that text I primarily critique MVRDV’s contribution to Nicholas Sarkozy’s Grand Paris competition in 2008. MVRDV produced a film which begins with a flying cube over Paris which is supposed to represent the volume of the built space that Paris will need for the next twenty years. The cube then nests beside the Eiffel Tower. The image evokes sci-fi precedents in the sense that it suggests that an “other” intelligence appears in the sky over Paris and then nests itself in the city. Once the cube sits on the ground, this ‘mothership’ breaks into numerous small cubes according to a swarm logic, which then nest themselves in various locations throughout Paris: this is how the future of Paris gets built. My criticism of the MVRDV project is that it views architecture as some otherworldly appearance with its own logic that acts independently of the cultural sphere. Now why would we want that sort of world? I love sci-fi but I don’t see the point of pretending that the future city gets built by a non- human agency. If the city organises itself according to the logic of numbers, as MVRDV argue, and if we build a city of numbers and of statistics, then we capitulate to pragmatism and lose our ability to intervene in the environment. That’s what I mean by ‘project.’ I don’t see the point in arguing for an agency that lies beyond the world or inside a machine or inside an artificial intelligence that will eventually eat me up! I like it in films when I devour popcorn, but find it infantile in the real world. What is the end vision of this? It certainly is one that is absolutely uninteresting to me. In the article I start with a reference to Immanuel Kant, who says that man’s enlightened state allows man to posit a real project by his own volition and by his own intelligence. It seemed to me that MVRDV’s project argues against this idea of enlightenment without, however, proposing an attractive alternative to it. I refuse to think of a city as a sort of code, where quantities get mechanically translated into spaces; how is that for pragmatism! So ‘project’ is a category that puts forward a view of agency, of human decision. The context you mention is mixed with very leftist political ideas, which in this form are dated. But lately they’ve had a renaissance. This idea of project promotes an aesthetic of bonjour tristesse and of existentialist melancholia. In other words, we understand why De Chirico was interesting to Rossi and in that particular political and cultural context. But De Chirico and the aesthetics of melancholia and of metaphysical poetry, has no impact on the mediatised and digitalised world today: it’s simply ineffective to cause cultural change. Therefore the discussion of the notion of project in architecture carries a taste of sentimentality for 1960s and 1970s leftist politics and is often nostalgic. The world is in a very different place now. Does project suggest a melancholic passive subjectivity then? As in we have no agency? One of the ideas is to give agency, but what agency can be effective in the world you live in? We cannot impose ways of living to everybody. In

a world where everyone is so mobile and connected, there is a sense of freedom that has emerged, and I welcome it. I don’t want to be told by the architect how I should live my life just as much as I don’t want to be told by the government in which town I should live and where I should work. But I do expect the architect to propose an authored view of the world when designing a building. I have been very interested in Peter Sloterdijk lately who describes the world is the accumulation of individual spheres in which many things can happen side-by-side. Different ideas should coexist. Today’s nostalgic revival of 1960s and 1970s Leftist autonomy project is not adapted to a world in which mobility is increased exponentially and information is circulating fast. We live in a different world. Building long walls that slice through cities as a ‘critical’ act will not have the same effect as before the internet was invented, and when Superstudio proposed them in their original version. Sloterdijk says that life is an issue of form. As an architect this interests me because form is the main instrument that architects have. Although Sloterdijk, as a philosopher, takes form metaphorically, then we as architects should take form seriously. It is interesting to read what Sloterdijk says on spherical space and that takes me to look at a building like Jean Nouvel’s Louvre in Abu Dhabi where we suddenly have a huge dome as an urban structure. I tell myself that we haven’t seen a dome for a long time. The patron for this project is significant, the architect is someone who knows what he is doing, and the function of the building is important. Therefore we have to take this seriously. This was done with a high level of consciousness. After decades of non-linearity, chaotic space, deconstructed forms - all episodes of architectural history where form is fragmented and dissolved - and now we have a dome. What does that mean? I’m saying there is another world being crafted. My suspicion is that it has to do with the ecological threat, the idea we need to protect ourselves against natural events and against other human groups. It also has something to do with global space. Meaning there is a museum that looks like a city and when you walk in it, it looks like Venice, but then from the satellite it looks like a dome. It caters to a different spatiality. Although I may not design a building like this, it is a building that is very contemporary and says something about space today. Yes, it’s a project that says something about architecture as well as culture at a particular historical period, like your MVRDV example that produces a city not made of form but a field of statistics that analogically reflects a particular sensibility. My last few questions relate to Eisenman. Why is he such a good educator? He is the best teacher I have met, and that for two reasons: One, he has a very strong method of reading the world. Secondly, he is brutally honest. He tells you exactly what he thinks and nothing else. If he sees something that he thinks is not working, he will say so. If you are going in the wrong direction, it is not a matter of tweaking the problem to make it better. If you are going in the wrong direction, there is nothing you can do to make it better and you need to do something else. It is a method of teaching and communicating that is absolutely effective. And Eisenman is in the book on Colin Rowe that you’re working on now. What will be included in the book? Ten texts by ten architects and an introduction by me. The contributing architects were all close to Rowe but then tried to get away from him by turning towards very different interests. They include: Maxwell, Vidler, Eisenman, Ungers, Krier, Koolhaas, Colquhoun, Slutzky, Hoesli, and Tschumi. Had Stirling and Hejduk been alive they would certainly be included. The book testifies to the many directions architectural theory took in the second half of the 20th century. I look forward to reading it. Thanks very much for this interview.

Dirk van den Heuvel is associate Professor at TU Delft. His expertise is in the field of post-war modern architecture. Together with Max Risselada he organised two exhibitions and publications: ‘Team 10 - In Search of a Utopia of the Present’ and ‘Alison and Peter Smithson ‘From the House of the Future to a house of today’. Together with Madeleine Steigenga and Jaap van Triest he authored ‘Lessons: Tupker / Risselada. A Double Portrait of Dutch Architectural Education’. He was an editor of the journal OASE (1993-1999 and is currently an editor of ‘DASH’ and the on-line journal ‘Footprint’.). He publishes in various magazines and on-line media, among which ‘ArchiNed’ and ‘PIN-UP’ magazine. He has worked as an architect for the offices of Neutelings Riedijk Architecten and De Nijl Architecten. Together with Guus Beumer, van den Heuvel curated the Dutch entry for the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale, ‘Open: A Bakema Celebration reflecting on the idea of an open society through the work and research of Jaap Bakema (1914-1981)’.

DIRK VAN DEN HEUVELAN INTERVIEW WITH SAMUEL PENN

You co-curated the Bakema exhibition for the Dutch Pavilion at the Biennale this year. In the publication you mention that you’ve established a new institute which has opened up an archive of material previously held by the NAI. Other than the theme set by Rem Koolhaas for the Biennale (Absorbing Modernity), what made you decide to look at Jaap Bakema specifically? There seems to be a interest today in looking back at this period. I’ve always been interested in and working with issues of modernity with a focus on the post-war period - even as a student. What really interests me are the questions behind the period, of course the work too, which is particular to that time. Even though the work may change, the questions behind the work remain pertinent today - questions of habitat, and the relationship between architecture and society, and how you might define or re-define the role of the architect in relation to society. It’s interesting to look at that period as a lens or a mirror to understand our present condition. In Holland, in preparation for the exhibition, we were asked - ‘why is it relevant, why do we do it now, what will we gain from looking back that will benefit us today?’, and I think it’s a hopelessly obnoxious question, because you make the ‘here and now’ the absolute standard for everything - your work, your culture or research - everything! In Holland this is a very strong and dominant attitude in the rhetoric and in the way you have to formulate your projects. You always have to relate to the ‘here and now’, which in itself is fine, but since it’s the dominant ideology it’s like a pavlovian response that managers or bureaucrats always ask you this really horrible question - ‘but how does it relate to what we’re doing today?’ without being aware, specific or articulate about what we mean by the ‘here and now’. It’s not a slogan but a kind of ‘automatism’ - a reflex. The New Institute (Het Nieuwe Instituut) came about after Max Risselada, my colleague and professor, and I did the Team 10 project. we felt that we should establish a more permanent and structural relationship between us - the research group at the department of architecture in Delft - and the archive at the NAI. And then there was an opportunity. In Holland cultural policies changed due to budget cuts and the former Architecture Institute (NAI) had to merge with the Design Institute in Culture, there was a new director who had a real interest in the archive, and who wanted to legitimise it through opening it up for research - so he approached me and I proposed to set up the ‘Study Centre’. It was born of a culture of politics that we hate - about budget cuts and the oppression of culture and research - but somehow we managed to use this as an opportunity to collaborate. Things have changed due to the crisis. Before we used to call it post-war modern architecture because classically or conventionally the big moment is of course before the second world war with the avant-garde, the establishing

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of CIAM (Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne), the De-Stijl movement in Holland, the Bauhaus and all the other movements of the 20’s, and the post-war moment was considered a sort of withering away of that legacy. But for me it was interesting because it was also a continuation, a re-phrasing of questions, and also the moment when the modern movement became mainstream which is interesting in itself. Then with the crisis we started to call it ‘welfare state architecture’ which might be a bit more to the point, because that’s the bigger framework in which it was all made possible, or at least happens. So around the 2008 crisis we started to look at the period through the lens of welfare state politics and how architects relate to this context of the welfare state - to politically contextualise this production. In our research we are exploring this idea amongst others because it’s a useful framework. The welfare state is not a homogeneous monolith as it’s often considered to be. At the time many architects didn’t like the welfare state, there were all kinds of criticisms. So the welfare system is interesting because it’s a system that tries to organise its own criticism - because criticism is very important in terms of innovation, assuring that money goes to the right places, experiments are done in the right places with the right purpose. So the notion at the institutional level, professionally, with the universities, the government institutions are crucial in this moment. The big criticisms of the welfare state in the 70’s and 80’s was that it was too bureaucratic etc.. Now we see that with the new ‘market’ conditions the bureaucracy hasn’t gone away. On the contrary it’s gotten even worse for all sorts of reasons. But in many ways they were probably right that these monopoly positions - nationalised industries - stood in the way of real innovation. However, with 40 years of hindsight, looking back - especially in Holland - there were all sorts of programmes to organise innovation, experiments and criticism. And it’s really interesting to learn from that, to understand that that there might be systems other than the ‘market’ that might be useful, helpful and possible for us to use. So the welfare issue is key to us. It also positioned architecture within this large organisational framework, with housing for instance. Another area we are interested in is Dutch Structuralism - that’s the architecture of Herman Hertzberger, Aldo van Eyck, Piet Blom - that’s very specific to the Dutch situation and then the bigger global trend around Team10. And the main thing that I’m discovering is about Structuralism through the archive is that there was a new awareness that the work of the architect as a form or object maker, or as an autonomous discipline needed be part of a larger social structure. That’s an important moment. And the idea came from anthropology through people like Franz Boas, Margaret Mead, and afterward it became part of the debate around ‘habitat’ which formed the backbone of Dutch Structuralism in Holland and Amsterdam. It involved architecture at a more social level and introduced ideas centred around the user, appropriation, flexibility, change, and then finding an architectural language for it.

You mention the introduction of anthropology. Why think it became popular during that period, or why did certain architects become preoccupied with it? That’s a good question. I think it’s related to this notion of democracy that very gradually moved its way from a political and social discourse into architecture. Of course also the issue of legitimacy for architects in the discipline, and then also the fact that architects

were more involved in housing and planning, which made architects have to look into this field. It also had to do with class structures and the shifting of power structures. So you might say that the first phase of modern architecture relates to redesigning the city for the industrial society, to emancipate the workers, this is also why there’s a lot of criticism of Corbusier who doesn’t really address the issues of workers housing in the city, placing them outside the city rather than inside. And post-war you have the construction of a middle class democracy. So if you make the user the centre of your discourse on inhabitation, architecture and the city - to look for a democratic, social legitimacy in your work, then anthropology naturally becomes one of the subjects of interest. This way of thinking still goes on today.

Do you think it was also a superimposition to some extent? Yes I suppose so, because the government also wanted this from the architects. That’s something the Second World War triggered of course - this promise of an egalitarian society was the new thing - and Bakema was certainly the one who embraced it, and Team 10 embraced it, but also struggled with it. You can see this in the work of the Smithsons - you can see how difficult it is to resolve because power structures are very real and the production of architecture works within those power structures - so to bring about and egalitarian society through architecture is pretty tough.

But they tried. Yes, much to their own frustration.

Could we explore the relationship between Bakema and the Smithsons - where it begins and develops and what the differences might have been between the British and the Dutch viewpoints? Yes, it begins through CIAM. CIAM was not just an ideology but also a history of exchange. It was an international global exchange of ideas. They probably met in 1951 in Hoddesdon. Bakema as a young architect was already at the first post-war CIAM conferences at Bridgewater and Bergamo together with Aldo van Eyck, but the Smithsons weren’t there as yet. He was slightly older than the Smithsons, which is important, he was also slightly older than van Eyck. He had already built a few buildings by the late 40’s before he joined van de Broek - he did them for Rotterdam Council - and they were very nice buildings with naked structures - where you can see the plumbing - with very economic materials - this was Rotterdam and everything had to be very cheap because there were very few resources. It was beautiful work which already included his idea of the ‘doorstep philosophy’ related to DeStijl. I think these early works made an impact on van Eyck and the Smithsons. So Bakema was considered the leader of Team 10, as much as it had a hierarchy - he organised the meetings from his office - he had a bigger office - at one point one of the biggest offices in Europe with about 200 employees and also offices all around Holland and Germany. He had a natural authority I suppose because he was more established. But he wasn’t an intellectual - the Smithsons weren’t really either. Aldo van Eyck was the real intellectual. His father was a professor and he was very erudite. But the Smithsons were basically self-made people. There’s a naivety there because they had an ordinary education - they self educated, read and appropriated what others brought to them. Alison’s father was trained at the Royal College and became head of an art academy in Newcastle I think - so he was a little bit more culturally educated, but it’s not a metropolitan or bourgeois upbringing - or a sophisticated intellectual background like Aldo van Eyck’s. Bakema was also from a common background - so he was like a sponge. He and the Smithsons absorbed everything. I think Bakema also got a lot from the Smithsons - there was a real exchange which is evident in his writing and you can see it in the notion of the ‘open society’ - I think he got that through the Smithsons who got it from Karl Popper which became current in Britain just before it spread to continental Europe. It was a notion that the Smithsons start to use in their competition in Berlin - which was not yet divided by the wall - and the Smithsons start to talk about the ‘open city’.

Was their work a protest? You could see it

like that, but Bakema was also always mainstream. That’s why I find him interesting actually. He stood for the all-inclusive society.

Which involved user participation, which has become popular again but in an entirely different context. We now hear a lot about the ‘bottom-up’ approach which I’m critical of personally. The motives that brought it about then and the motives that drive it now are entirely different. So, in what way was ‘participation’ important to Bakema, and in what way was the ‘open society’ important to the Smithsons? The Smithsons were British, so their background was rooted in class differences, much more so than the Dutch. It could be argued that one of the biggest differences to the British approach to the welfare state and the Dutch was housing. The housing estates in Britain and also in places like Paris, were used to contain the working classes rather than to emancipate them - in territorial terms but also in social terms - creating problems of ghettoization. This didn’t happen in Holland. I mean, Holland also had problems but they were completely incomparable to the problems created in France, in the UK or the States. In Holland it’s not just about emancipation and elevation, but it’s also about mixing society and the classes. So all the housing provision post-war is about how to achieve this. One of the popular phrases in Holland was ‘the makeable society’ - that we can make or create a society. It was a very strong idea then, related to a welfare and egalitarian society, which is now related to a market centred society.

It’s been appropriated now. Yes, with incentives, to stimulate or control how people behave or live in cities - through education, tax incentives - all sorts of instruments for the government and its institutions to influence its citizens.

A by-product of earlier good intentions. Yes, Colin Rowe wrote this book ‘The Architecture of Good Intentions’. Colin Rowe was very much against all this.

It also comes out of a change in the way we think about the individual’s role in society. The way they, Bakema and friends talked about it was very different because it was still understood that the individual had a certain agency - that change could be affected politically. If we go back to the idea of ‘bottom up’ and ‘participation’ - then, as now, they both start with a systemic crisis - then the welfare state, now the market and what’s been called the neo-liberal economy - and its inability to deliver as much as people expect. There’s no money, there’s no credit. So if you want things done, then one strategy is to employ a ‘bottom up’ approach or policy as a way to stimulate the market and society. It has to do with the breakdown of a system which has reached a certain limit. But back then it was highly politicised and participation wasn’t just participation but activism. I don’t see this activism today. There are little bits here and there. I mean the ‘occupy movement’ is not the same. In those days they would have moved into the banks and in to the stock exchanges for weeks and weeks to stop them from working. Now they just sit in the street. Well who cares. No one is really bothered by that at all. Back then they were much more political and much more effective in a way. It had many positive effect, many negative too I suppose, you could say that Bakema is deconstructed by this participation thing, he has a heart attack and loses a lot of energy - it’s also a personal story. So today, I think, it’s really to patch up some of the miseries caused by the crisis, but it’s not a real solution. I don’t know. In Holland there are a few interesting programmes where the government still has some control, but it’s more about setting the right conditions to allow for private individual enterprise, and then private individual meaning its citizens or groups of citizens, which are very different compared to private initiatives led by the market. It means that housing developers were not allowed to build housing complexes beyond a certain size. Now, even in Amsterdam with its strong socialist tradition has decided that private initiatives should be encouraged and that they should allow these projects to be built - complete neighbourhoods - while maintaining or even raising

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living standards. Because the government is really the only instrument to control building standards - the moment that regulations are relaxed you will get trash - builders and developers will always go to the bottom of what is necessary. If the regulations say that you now no longer need windows as a stipulation, builders will build houses without windows. That’s what happens. Especially in city areas. When pressure on urbanised spaces is so high, demand is so high, then the only instrument to control standards is the government - the market can’t and won’t do it - developer associations can’t do it - business associations can’t do it - the only method is through government control and regulation. It’s a pity. It would be nice if it weren’t the case. We had these experiments in the past when the regulations were relaxed - for instance a house or an apartment wasn’t required to have an outdoor space anymore, or storage space, because the idea was that the market would take care of it. And of course it didn’t happen. In those years it can be seen that none of the houses had any balconies anymore or storage space. The minimum set by the government is the maximum met by the developers. So you need the government. And on the other hand, this ‘bottom up’ idea is seen as something that will open up the market led by private citizen initiatives. I think it’s interesting, although of course it has problems - the people that can do something tend to be middle or upper class, not working class. If we are seeking an all inclusive society then this problem will have to be looked in to.

If Bakema was alive and saw ‘participation’ today do you think he would recognise it as being the same idea? He was a pragmatist. He was very aware of the power structures. Nowadays we call these structures ‘ecologies’ which is really a term of hopelessness because it’s a depoliticised term. It proposes that there is a natural system somehow at work beyond the political and that things can’t be changed or organised in a different way. The ‘metabolism’ of a city, or the city as an ‘ecological’ system is of course there to analyse and study - you can work with it - but in reality it’s always a political question of how you organise the flow of money and the notion of redistribution is forgotten largely - everywhere there are all sorts of systems of redistribution - for instance in the banking system it was clear in the way private debt was transformed into public debt as a redistribution of money flows, and it’s a political problem. It’s not really related to architecture on the surface, but they are interdependent to a large extent.

But in the ‘50s and ‘60s a number of individual architects did provide a physical vision for the redistribution of wealth. It was manifested in their urban and architectural vision for society. Yes, that’s partly why we chose to exhibit Bakema. It’s kind of a soft criticism of Koolhaas’ theme this year, which is very interesting and a good exhibition, but Koolhaas doesn’t offer the same vision or direction. In the interview he did in ‘Volume’ he complains that people always see him as a surfer, but it was a metaphor he introduced himself in the late ‘80s early ‘90s - that architects should be like surfers rather than fighting political battles - just to go with the flow and that you cannot control the waves of the Zeitgeist or political fashion - it’s about surfing those tides and to try to make the best of it - to go with the mainstream or the maelstrom even. And now he complains, it’s a soft complaint, that he was never into that. He’s a very good journalist in that he makes fantastic observations and knows how to make them into provocative statements. He knows which buttons to push, but he never offered a comprehensive vision. He did a few projects, like Parc de la Villette, that verged on a vision, but those were a long time ago. He has such a big office now so he has to produce and produce to make it operative. So if Bakema would be here today I suppose that he would try to develop a ‘vision’. It’s good to think of ‘conditions’, yes of course it’s still necessary to think about the conditions on which architecture depends, but at a certain point a gesture has to be made, or several scenarios, which was for a long time the favourite way to do things in Holland - to produce scenarios on a national scale. In the 90s there were scenarios

is already bringing these ideas to other places like Germany and Yugoslavia and other eastern European countries. The Smithsons were also part of this whole debate about ‘climatic architecture’ which is related to the British experience in the colonies - or the former colonies and protectorates. This stuff is being talked about at the AA in London at the time and of course is also influencing their work like the Doha scheme in Qatar for example. It’s very tough to say that one idea comes from one source to become a common thing. For the Dutch the ‘doorstep’ idea was very important - the space of transition - the space between - that’s very much part of the Dutch Team 10 contribution. But it was also that idea of where the private citizen meets the public, this ‘doorstep’ that was agreed to be important by all parties - van Eyck, Bakema and the Smithsons. I guess this originates specifically out of the Team 10 discourse.

It’s interesting looking at these images you have in your publication. There’s a palpable transition in Bakema’s way of thinking about urbanism. If you look at the Plan for Pampus in 1964, then the Hamburg Mümmelmansberg in 1969, and then the Verneuil scheme in 1979 you see this incredible viral dissolution of the idea of a common urban experience or city toward a fractured individualistic one. It’s a visual commentary of the actual attitudes of the society at the time. But it’s not just a reaction to these changes, but one that is being addressed from within the architectural discipline itself. It’s clear when looking at the material that architects have also been agents in the development of a kind of anti-architecture and possibly anti-city sentiment. The response was that other architects, after the efforts of Team 10, recast the discipline as an autonomous historic and formal exercise, highlighted in the ‘70s with the work of Peter Eisenman and friends. Yes, you also see this in Holland. The response to Bakema and van Eyck by the emerging younger generation was to introduce a discourse based around typo-morphology which was similar to Eisenman’s, but in fact he never really had that much of an impact in Holland. But typo-morphology research does become important at that time. However, you can already trace that back to groups around van Eyck in Delft and typo-morphology is also related to structuralism - how underlying structures are tenacious in how cities develop and are organised. The Mümmelmansberg project, it’s a pity it was never built, is very much about organising a process. Architects, and I include myself, like the projects around 1959-1964 because they’re fantastic in their visual rhetoric and how they sit in the landscape. They look ambitious and provide a vision for society, but at the same time it is anti-urban because it’s done in one complete gesture, which is then criticised by the likes of Jane Jacobs and Colin Rowe - who say the city is made by many actors working together and the accumulation of historic experience and so on. In the Pampus plan you can see the Dutch landscape as a major source of inspiration, then the Mümmelmansberg project tries to integrate or absorb the idea of the city as a process of many actors working together, and we have to question whether the result is enjoyable. I mean it doesn’t look nice.

In these three projects you see the ambition changing from that of large scale structures, even if they are autonomous from the city, to that of the individual household on a plot. It’s kind of a break-down in the public sphere. Yes, but you already see this in the modern avant-garde and is a response to affluence as much as anything. So you have these two factors in the ‘70s - one of affluence and on the other the economic system breaking down. There’s also a credit crisis. But compared to the ‘40s and ‘50s the ‘70s is still a comparably affluent period.

True. Purely visually this last one at Verneuil also looks much more cellular - I mean biological in its structure. It occurs to me that it might be influenced by others like van Eyck. It fits more with the ideas that van Eyck was pursuing. Was Bakema influenced at that level by his peers? Bakema was used to working in groups in his office and I guess Team 10 suited

for liberal development, ecological development and so on. So you could choose, rather like a menu, which was a bit naïve, but it helped people to make choices. But that was the last thing that happened at that level in Holland. And of course in the 90’s everything changed - the market was going to take care of everything. And it didn’t.

Yes, but there was this surge of development with the opening or deregulation of the markets - the free market economy. It was the period identified in Holland as ‘Super Dutch’. Yes, it was a horrible moment! I hated it. That’s why I went to work in a University. It made all sorts of debate and discussion impossible. It narrowed everything to a kind of operativity - and you couldn’t criticise it. Any money that was available for research and innovation that had previously gone to a number of subjects was now being funnelled into this notion of ‘Super Dutch’ rather than trying to develop alternative perspectives that wouldn’t necessarily be helpful immediately. It’s very important that you organise other perspectives, otherwise you’re bound to reach the limit of a strategy very soon.

It’s rarely thought about this way, but the CIAM and then Team 10 meetings were to some extent an instrument to test a number of different perspectives within a defined political framework. In what way do you think Bakema saw himself as representing a particular perspective - I guess the Dutch perspective - did he see himself as particularly Dutch in this respect? Oh yes, totally. But the Dutch have never really seen themselves as nationalists. It’s not the same as it is in Britain or France. That kind of nationalism is unknown in Holland.

What I’m trying to get at was that CIAM and later Team 10 was an international instrument, not just ideologically but also practically. They came together with an understanding rather like the framework of the United Nations to discuss national concerns at an international level. Do you think Bakema as a delegate, so to speak, brought something particularly Dutch to the meetings - or did the Smithsons bring something to the debates that then became part of a more universal understanding? That’s a tough question. There’s this assumption that architecture is somehow national. Here in Venice I guess it’s amplified by the fact that the nations are given their own pavilions. Architecture is always international. Architecture travels easily from one region to another, one country to another. But I think the Dutch may have brought - not so much Bakema but van Eyck - a preoccupation with how architecture and anthropology could be understood together. The Smithsons I think are always misunderstood. I still don’t quite know how it happened. Banham pitches them in a certain way. He mystifies a lot of the things they were doing. He relates the Smithsons work at Bethnal Green with the working class and it was much more complicated than that. In the late ‘50s it’s much more about the middle class than the working class. Of course there’s an interest in working class neighbourhoods and communities, but really it’s all about car ownership and the new consumer society. It wasn’t just about embracing it of course, but it was the main topic of debate. The big clash between the Dutch and the Smithsons came in ‘62 at the Royaumont meeting when they proposed that they wanted to think of the city as different systems working together. There was always huge rivalry, and the Dutch were still trying to develop one system - one completely coherent system. The Smithsons used this term ‘ecological urbanism’ related to habitat but it wasn’t particularly novel - Corbusier also used the term ‘ecology’. The Smithsons realised that the system of cars and motorways had different rules, different developments in relation to time and space than a housing unit in a city. And Piet Blom and Aldo van Eyck especially, were still looking for this one coherent system. The Smithsons were much more realistic in that sense. But I’ve never thought about how all these different ideas became an international thing because then you’d have to follow each development and study its impact. But even outside of these meetings, Bakema, through his practice

28 OUTSIDERS

him because of that. He was always working with others and it’s because of this that people always question his authorship. He is always contested as an author. That’s partly why he’s been forgotten. I’ve had some interesting responses from the other pavilions - for instance in Brazil he was totally unknown which is incredible because he was the major figure in Team 10, the last secretary of CIAM, so he was very important. But because he always worked together with other people his authorship is always questioned - and Bakema and Aldo van Eyck were the tandem who ran the architecture magazine ‘Forum’ in the early years from ‘59 to ‘63, and they had a lifelong friendship, friendship and rivalry, helping each other out with jobs and public debate and juries - so there was a strong relationship between the two even though they were very different. Even so, Bakema would have thought of van Eyck as an elitist. And he was, even in the ‘70s the Neo-Marxists criticised van Eyck for being and architect-artist rather than being an architect-sociologist. And Bakema was the one who kept talking to everyone - the Neo-Marxists and the students and so on. He was the one who always succeeded in maintaining a discussion. Even the Neo-Marxists had a special place for him which is quite astonishing. Bakema wanted architecture to be at the heart of social issues and society.

To go back to his authorial presence. Let’s say we look at Bakema and Michelangelo in terms of the strength of authorship, then one could reasonably say that they are comparable. Their strength of vision is comparable even if their output is completely different. So even though Bakema is regarded as a ‘social’ architect - and perhaps even hidden behind the title - his voice could be regarded as an equal to Michelangelo. Wow. That’s quite a comparison! Well, as you say, he’s quite a different author. It reminds me of this TV series he did in the ‘60s in which he talks to the nation and while he’s talking to them he’s drawing these sketches. Then you see his character and his strength as a communicator. In each of the works you always perceive his hand, even though he works in groups, he is highly skilled in moving and directing teams to achieve his vision. When he died it was obvious what a strong force he was in the office. The work lost something special. So it’s interesting to think of the role of a figure like Bakema within these large groups and social structures, as a very strong directive force. When he died Team 10 also ended. Peter Smithson called him the Tito of Team 10 - keeping everybody together with his forceful attitude. He was democratic but also like a father figure - telling people when enough was enough I suppose. In Holland we certainly need a little more distance to say something like that. If I was to say this in Holland they would do a double take! But yes, I agree, there is a strong authorial presence. The nice thing about Bakema was that he was at the centre of things and made things happen. It’s a relief to finally be free of the idea that the solution lies in the periphery or in the counter position. We need to be at the centre. That’s the lesson I take from Bakema.

My first question is why Mies? Why Mies. Well when I wrote that book I was intrigued by the idea of silence. I’m not an architect, I’m a philosopher and I’ve been reading a lot of architectural theory and teaching and supervising PhD’s and have been engaged in a lot of research. Having read Manfredo Tafuri and Massimo Cacciari, and many others who explored the work on Mies I discovered this idea of silence - withdrawal, negativity, renunciation - it seemed to be like a recurrent idea in a lot of the philosophical orientated scholarship on Mies. So I wanted to explore the implications of what this silence could mean. Of course that is tied together with other things in static theory, with Theodor Adorno for instance, his work on Beckett and with his work on John Cage - the idea of silence as a kind of ending point for modern aesthetics. So the book is really a reading of other readings for me, it’s not a book on Mies as such, it’s a reading of other readings of Mies, trying to figure out what this topos of silence actually means.

I am familiar with Tafuri’s two volumes on Modern Architecture in which the authors talk about the silence in Mies’s work. Why did you choose to focus on Mies specifically? I think ‘Modern Architecture’ is his key text. Tafuri is one of the great historians and he’s also one of the most influential architectural historians for a philosophical audience because he has ideas that are more philosophically oriented. A lot of people read Tafuri who are not necessarily architects so in that sense he’s very interesting. When I discovered him I had read a lot of Adorno. To me he was like the Adorno of architectural theory. That’s why I was interested in him and these lines about silence, or the withdrawal or the renunciation in the Seagram Building are key passages in his book. And it was also picked up by Cacciari who then continued to develop the idea. (Caccaiari was also the Mayor of Venice for a while, for about 10 years). He connected it specifically to Heidegger, to Heidegger’s understanding of technology , and then I found Reinhold Martin’s book ‘The Organisation Complex’, he also starts from this passage in Tafuri and Francesco Dal Co’s book and develops it from a different angle. So I found all these tropes about silence being interpreted in various ways and somehow wanted to bring them together into one systematic reading. This is why the book is called ‘The Silences of Mies’ because it’s obviously a plural silence.

How would you explain what Tafuri was trying to say? Its part of a chapter called ‘The Activity of the Modern Masters After the War’ where you have a series of endings, Corbusier, Gropius and others, and all have this sense of endings or a certain sense of waning, fading, loss of creativity, how modern architecture somehow peters out at

Sven-Olov Wallenstein is Professor of Philosophy at Södertörn University, Stockholm. His research interests include aesthetic theory, Modernism in the visual arts and architecture , German Idealism, phenomenology, and modern philosophies of desire, power, and subjectivity. Recent publications include; ‘Nihilism, Art, Technology’ (2010) and ‘Biopolitics and the Emergence of Architecture’ (2009). Works in progress include Translations of Diderot’s Salons and ‘Essays on Art’, ‘Hegel’s Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts’, and ‘Adorno’s Negative Dialektik’ and ‘Ästhetische Theorie’, ‘Architecture, Critique, Ideology: Essays on Architecture and Theory’, ‘Foucault, Biopolitics, and Governmentality’ (ed. with Jakob Nilsson), and an anthology of essays on Heidegger’s philosophy of language and poetry (ed. with Ola Nilsson). From spring 2012, Wallenstein has been the leader of the research project ‘Space, Power, Ideology’ and since 2001 he has been the editor-in chief of ‘Site Magazine’. In 2008 Wallenstein published ‘The Silences of Mies’ a study of readings and interpretations of Mies’s work. This interview draws on his writings on Mies and his book on Foucault and biopolitics.

SVEN-OLOV WALLENSTEINAN INTERVIEW WITH PENNY LEWIS

the end, but there is one ending which is the ‘tragic’ ending which is a great gesture, which is the Miesian ending. I think this is why this passage was then picked up by Cacciari in his interpretation as the key passage in Tafuri’s entire work. That’s of course Cacciari’s reading so maybe I’m now reading Tafuri through Cacciari.

So from Tafuri’s point of view it’s an expression of failure? Not of failure. Obviously modernism fails but it can fail in different ways, it can fail in a grandiose way which somehow doesn’t just embody but incorporates the contradictions of the modernists idea and makes it into great work, like the final work. It has the same position as Beckett’s plays would have in Adorno’s reading and the old conversionist idea of silence. From my point of view not being an architect but being interested in the connection with Heidegger was important because Cacciari was a close collaborator of Tafuri’s at the school here in Venice (Università IUAV di Venezia). He brought a more philosophically structured attitude to that kind of historical reading. Cacciari connects him to Heidegger who I was working on at the time so for me there was a point of convergence between many different things.

If we leave Heidegger for now and explore the meaning as opposed to the reading of the silence of Mies that Tafuri is talking about. You said that it’s not necessarily about crisis, or that it is about crisis, but crisis can have different qualities. Emptiness and the silence, can they be inter-exchanged as expressions or is there something different about the idea of silence? Obviously in many contexts they can be exchanged - renunciation, withdrawal, emptiness, and this blank reflection etcetera, so there are a whole series of images, but in the literature the trope of silence is the recurrent one. You also find it in Michael Hays for instance and other texts. Tafuri and Dal Co’s book which was published in ‘76 in Italian, formed a kind of paradigm for other interpretations. Everyone kept repeating and reinterpreting and twisting this trope over and over again. But what we are going to be exploring in the lecture today is perhaps a bit more systematic. I think there are three basic ways to understand this silence, or there are three different silences, and the first one is a little bit in Tafuri and explicitly in Cacciari, where this silence is the ending of a certain metaphysical idea about architecture. It connects the history of philosophy and Cacciari connects it to Heidegger. It has to do with the way modern art becomes impossible in the face of modern technology. It’s a kind of metaphysical ontological speculative reading of this trope of silence. Secondly someone like Hays for instance is closer to the Frankfurt School and I think all of these things, all of which are already in Tafuri’s texts are close to the Frankfurt School, the silence it’s not so much a metaphysical ending but more like a socialist structure continuation, it has to do with art under capitalism. Silencing doesn’t have anything to do with the history of philosophy and metaphysics, only in a mediated fashion, but it is fundamentally something to do with the contradictions of art under late capitalism; that the formal languages of architecture are emptied out because there is no commodification, and so it’s more or less a socially oriented understanding. And these can be combined, and many interpretations tend to combine these two, but they are still distinct readings. The third one I picked up from Reinhold Martin’s book ‘The Organisational Complex’ it says that silence is in fact not just an

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act of renunciation but is something that opens up a different interpretation because the screen like quality or surface is actually not just an ending it is the beginning of a new kind of modularity. So it is a modulation that opens up the possibility for other repetitions in the future. For Tafuri this is a tragic moment which is then repeated as a ‘farce’ because his is the old Marxian history reading. And what Reinhold says is - no - its neither ‘tragedy’ or ‘farce’, it’s the beginning of a kind of new modularity. So, from one point of view it looks like a silencing and on the other hand is already replete with a plethora of other discourses and possibilities that open up. Reinhold wants to get away from the sense of ending and exhausting - so exhaustion is only one moment. Something is exhausted but something new begins, and I think this is the most interesting interpretation because it’s a more productive one, and it shows how formal languages were reinterpreted and became the stock and trade of lots of modern architecture or more specifically modern corporate architecture.

What about Mies himself. In your book you make a lot of references to his writings. Yes there’s a lot of talk about Mies and I think he’s kind of oracular in a way. If you read this collection of texts ‘Das kunstlose Wort: Gedanken zur Baukunst’ (The Artless Word: thoughts on the Art of Building) it’s clear that he’s not a philosopher - I mean he’s influenced by Romano Guardini, a Thomist who nobody reads anymore. A great many modern artists read bad philosophy. But he had his own ideas for sure. I am really not a scholar of Mies and am really just picking up the interpretations of others. He might not have accepted this heavy philosophical reading, but he does talk about concepts like ‘almost nothing’, and he was definitely a minimalist artist.

I’m sure I read somewherethat Mies’ silence was due to the fact that he thought he didn’t need to talk about architecture. But he did. You know the ‘Artless Word’ is a big book and he makes a lot of statements from the ‘20s onward. I think he was a very self-conscious architect. You know Beatriz Colomina wrote that he was always projecting himself and creating a persona for himself. In the ‘20s he was very conscientious about being part of the right avant-garde groups. He made all these theoretical projects in the ‘20s, the glass skyscrapers, which he surrounded by text and oracular statements so in a sense it’s not unlike Corbusier in that he combines statements, texts and words in a certain way. So if there is a silence in Mies it is a very calculated and self conscious silence.

Still sticking with Mies, I know you’re not a scholar of Mies and you’re not a social historian either, but I’m very interested in that periodin the US ( the period when a lot of European scholars have lost interest in him), when he’s not part of the European avant-garde, he’s doing something else. Architects like Alison and Peter Smithson looked to Mies in the post war period and he offers something. He appears to be striving to give expression to something that’s important in the post war period. The Smithsons relate to that; do you have any sort of insights into what that sentiment or impulse is? I’m sorry, I didn’t quite get the point you’re making?

In the 1950s architects in Britain that identify with Mies like Alison and Peter Smithson are unusual. Most people in Britain would identify with Le Corbusier or they might identify with what happened in Europe or Scandinavia during the 1930s. But the Smithson’s identified with Mies because he expresses something about the peculiarities of the post war period - as if, at that moment, you have an option, you can go one way or another. There’s something of a particular quality about his attitude, not his philosophy but his attitude. But what did they say, I mean I don’t know them enough, I know a lot about them but I didn’t know they had a specific connection to Mies, what did they say about Mies?

Well they spend quite a lot of time in their book ‘Modernism without Rhetoric’ talking about why Mies still represents the

eyes of. Perhaps it’s true, but I would say there is also the inverted danger, I remember Mark Cousins once said ‘how can you teach people at the AA to become interested in baroque architecture?’ you can’t do it by giving them historical facts because they couldn’t care less, and you could say ‘you need to learn this because you want to become erudite persons’, and they still couldn’t care less. It doesn’t work. The same thing with the history of philosophy, I teach history of philosophy, and you can’t teach 16th century philosophy saying you need to know this because it actually happened.

Why not? Because it’s an un-philosophical way of reading history because the texts are there, they’re dead and they’re closed and you memorise them and then you do an exam, or you repeat what’s being said. Why would you do that?

But as you say by restudying it throws light on your own situation. On your own situation - and you need to approach it from some point of view in time which is inevitably your own point, so you need to read classical texts from the present.

One of the things that I think is quite interesting about architecture, and please don’t be offended, is that because students don’t have a broad liberal systematic chronological education then their relationship to philosophy can be very faddish. You write a book and then they say ‘oh I need to know a little bit about Piranesi so I’ll read a little bit about it’ and so we have this strange sampling of philosophy and history. I would say the counter position to that is that if everybody had a little bit of an insight into everything we would be less faddish? Sure, I mean obviously that’s a problem in philosophy. I’ve been teaching it for many years in various art schools and architecture schools and I know the fad problem. If an artist, an architect or a filmmaker reads, say Deleuze, and they produce a work or a design out of it then of course that’s a moment of ridicule! Then again, you can’t say as a philosopher ‘I have the authority of this text and they mean this and that’, you can’t do that because every interpretation of a text - which also transgresses the disciplinary boundaries - an artist reads a philosopher, necessarily entails a transformation. Otherwise there wouldn’t be any potential. So if an artist, a painter reads Merleau-Ponty and does something with it its fine! So I can’t say you are not allowed to do that, that’s obviously completely unproductive. What I do as a philosopher when I used to teach in those schools, I’d say ‘fine you can do whatever you want but if you know more about the concept you will actually be able to get more out of them - you will be able to use them in a better way if you understand their history, their ideology what they mean etcetera. You still have to do your own interpretation because you are not philosophers but you could a better interpretation if you know the history of them’. So in that sense I don’t think there’s a contradiction between having a lot of historical knowledge and then producing a new interpretation of them - and also an interpretation which displaces the work into a completely different disciplinary context - which is the context of art production or architectural production. So that’s what I feel is my task as a teacher. I couldn’t teach them art or architecture because they are artists and architects but I can teach them a certain way of approaching philosophical texts that would allow students to get more out of the text - without attempting to make them into scholarly philosophers because I mean that has no point - they can’t do that.

The thing that I found quite interesting in ‘The Silences of Mies’ is that right at the beginning its almost polemical. Its sort of saying, people use Foucault in a certain way and there’s a problem with that because that’s a bit one sided, it suggest Foucault was not interested in agency. Mies is particularly interesting because he is quite unfashionable at the moment; not among certain people, but you wouldn’t find tutors in studio referring to Mies much anymore. There’s a general tendency to deride architects with a very strong sense of agency, individual agency, which I think Mies epitomises. Absolutely. Yes Tafuri and Cacciari also write about him as one of the last great artists - and his pronunciation is his stance -

aspiration to give form to the modernistic impulse. That’s the basic thesis although it’s more insistent about the relationship between form, and technology and architectural expression. I don’t know so much about that so I’m reluctant to say anything, but I would say that what interests me rather is the way that Mies would connect with someone like John Cage for instance, the glass surfaces would be about emptiness that is also a fullness. What appears as a kind of formalistic reductivism is in fact also part of an opening up of the work, towards the work. You can see it in Rauschenberg’s white paintings from ‘51 and the silent piece by Cage a couple of years later - and the the work of the whole neo-avant-garde movement which has traditionally been perceived as a reductivist or ‘emptying out’, but which is in fact a new type of exploration of how the work is opened up - how it loses its autonomy and becomes part of a context - how it becomes part of the corporeal situation of the spectator. A lot of historical art scholarship today has asserted that the opening up of the work occurred in the 60s because of minimalist conceptual art are now pushing that transformation back in history. It began much earlier. I mean to use those horrible terms modern, post modern, the post modern began much earlier and what art historians are doing now is erasing this line - because the art historical canon somehow pinpointed the ‘60s as the moment it broke through - is now being dissolved I would say.

Do you agree with that? Yes I think the truth about history is that we don’t know. It’s just a question of how we read history, and so I think from our point of view we need to move beyond this fetishising of the ‘60s and push those things back in history to see there is no clear divide anywhere in history.

One of the problems with that is that you then have an interpretation of modernism that’s a little bit one-sided. Yes or you can say that everything which is post-modern was also modern - obviously that’s the end result. This division can be kind of a heuristic device because it allows you to see the differences as long as you don’t believe too strongly in there being any particular moment in time where this division occurs but as a kind of heuristic tool, as a tool for investigation it can be used. As long as you don’t put too much belief in the tool itself it can allow you to make discoveries but what was actually the true about the historical moment is only a question of our interpretation. That’s of course something we view from our vantage point in time, how we read history.

Is there good history and bad history? Yes of course there are bad histories and good histories. If you look at art history ‘what is the true meaning of Picasso or Duchamp’ as Hal Foster would say, and I agree with that. It’s a kind of retroactive question - we rediscover moments because we find a reticence in the present. The same thing happens in the history of philosophy, we rediscover old thinkers; suddenly they become actualised because something happens in the present. So history is not a given in that sense. I think the problems with the kind of interpretations we find in Tafuri, Cacciari and also Hays is that history is there - that we need to discover what actually happened. But I think someone like Reinhold Martin would say that whatever happened is not really so interesting. The interesting thing is what happens if we look at history in a certain way? Which is obviously not to deny historical scholarship but the facts are there to be interpreted and they mean something. Works means something from our point of view. If you listen to Beethoven from the point of view of Schönberg he would sound different obviously. And as Adorno would say, and I think Adorno is right, that one needs to listen to Beethoven from the point of view of Schönberg or Goethe from the point of view of Beckett - and we have no other option other than to look at it that way. I mean this is the way Goethe and Beethoven looked at history so in that sense we’re doing the same thing.

The danger of course for a younger generation of people is that they can then become indifferent because everything is a product of who you chose to look through the

30 OUTSIDERS

and even though he couldn’t sign off the buildings himself because he wasn’t part of the American Architectural Guild - so in a certain way his signature was blurred and Philip Johnson had to sign them off. . But this also why he is such a strong presence in certain strands of critical theory that want to retain the notion of authorship. Mies is in that sense also one of the last great authors, also Le Corbusier for instance. Whereas modern architects tend to be in groups and assemblages of people and they allow the idea of bureaucracy. I have a Swedish PhD student that I accepted to supervise just yesterday who wants to write about ‘bureaucracy as agency’, what kind of bureaucratic structure is actually behind the agency - how bureaucratic structures are actually the agency behind architecture. It’s very close to Reinhold Martin’s study about the organisational complex. So he’s working on various official buildings in Sweden, how they were constructed during the 60s and 70s and really wants to get rid of the whole idea of authorship or at least make a more complex idea of authorship. The fetishising of the author is of course then part of the late modernist paradigm - where you also find people like Adorno and Tafuri. That’s why I say Tafuri is like the Adorno of architectural history, he knows that the author is doomed, but he can disappear in various ways. He can just fade away or die in a grand gesture. There’s this great quote from Adorno when he speaks about Schönberg. He says that Schönberg puts a halt to dialectics, but dialectically! I think it’s in his ‘Philosophy of New Music’ which was published for the first time in ‘46, ‘47. There’s an English translation, just after the war. In it Stravinsky is the bad ending, Stravinsky is the eclectic, almost the proto-post-modern composer who Adorno hates at that time. But he likes Schönberg because he ends it dialectically. That I think is very close to the reading of Mies you find in Tafuri’s book.

It sounds like you’re saying that we accept the fact that the author is doomed, that that’s the condition? I didn’t get that sense from reading what you were saying about the one sided reading of Foucault. This one sided reading of Foucault has already been accepted for the last 20 years.

What’s been accepted - the end of the author? No the reading that the core of his work was mainly oriented towards discipline and repression, is wrong.

Determinism? Yes. It’s just completely wrong and in his publications, the many lecturers from the ‘70s, the huge body of work which has been published, you see that this idea of discipline - the ‘Panopticon’ from 1975 - is just one small idea that he was flirting with for a year or so. It’s just part of a long long development. His real issues are about agency and how to become a subject, and how to exert a certain freedom in relation to oneself which he calls ‘subjectification’. Discipline was only a little part.

Like Sartre?Not like Sartre. He thought Jean-Paul Sartre

was too Cartesian. For Sartre freedom was always absolute and for Foucault freedom is always situated - located in a particular moment in time, and its conditions would constantly change. And so the task of philosophy is to uncover those conditions that both prohibit freedom and make freedom possible at each moment in history. I think a much more fluid Foucault has entered the discourse, but not so much the architectural discourse because the example of the prison was so visible. It was easy to use because It had a form and a visual quality. So it’s over-cited. I was doing research on a French group called the CERFI ‘Centre for the Research of Institutional Formation’ and it was actually the moment when Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari came into contact with Architecture (It was an avant-garde group. There’s an anthology coming out called ‘Deleuze and the City’). The group was led by Félix Guattari who was a psychoanalyst and a political activist. And in the group they got a commission to work on public facilities or public institutions - ‘equipment collective’. They wanted to analyse why people desire, or why there’s a demand for public facilities, it was kind of post ‘68. And at the time they had something very interesting called ‘contract research’ which was a completely crazy idea, or a

very smart idea because the French government thought - ‘okay we have all these revolutionary groups - we need to pacify them. Let’s give them money so they can do research’. So anyway, they could apply for money to do research, you didn’t need to have a PhD in anything. You didn’t have to have any formal qualifications. You could be an activist or a crazy guy!

Did the Department of Education do this or..? The Minister of Interior Affairs or something like that. So they gave them money, and we interviewed some of these people in CERFI and they said it was like having a drug dealer, ‘we got free drugs for a couple of years and then they said no more money!’. Everything just collapsed. They did this research on public facilities - it was ‘70, ‘71 and Deleuze was involved Foucault gave talks and I think that’s how their interest into ‘space’ began. It’s one of the crucial moments in why ‘space’ becomes important. They worked in architecture on hospitals and prisons, the city as an idea, and I think a lot of that work then coalesced into ‘Discipline and Punish’ but it’s a highly politicised and almost ‘extreme left’ radical splinter group. And you can see how political their understanding of space, the city, habitat, the building, the institution was. A little bit of that came into the prison analysis. But it also went through many other channels and he published several books which are still only in French - collective research projects on the politics of habitation and so on. They were analysing the fact that the French state in Paris began to analyse how people live, how many children they had in the early 19th century, social medicine. They were investigating the origin of that concept - also statistics were used, the hospital was one of the first key studies. How the hospital becomes a machine for analysing the city - and there was a popular book that came out in ’77 that they all read called ‘The Curing Machines’, which is possibly also one of the sources for Corbusier’s living machine because the phrase was taken from Doctor Jacques-René Tenon who came up with the idea in the 1780s when he said the hospital should not be a particular building that has a certain structure that symbolises authority and the history of medicine, but rather that It should be a curing machine dispersed throughout the city so curing could occur all over the place. So it’s a kind of dissolution of the concrete building so it becomes more like a diagram that extends throughout the city. From that point onward Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari’s interest in space began in a very concrete empirical way. I think this has been completely lost in the reception of Foucault because these books are not being translated, they are not being re-edited, I don’t think any of these texts are translated into English but you find them in weird archives in Paris where there is some research. So this is also one of the things that I wanted to bring up in the book to get a more nuanced image of what Foucault was doing - bio politics and the caring of life also originates in that interest in the hospital as a curing machine.

This doesn’t seem like ‘fad’ research to me. Of course it’s from a position but it is real research. Sure. Many of these ideas have been known for a long time in philosophical scholarship but haven’t been looked at in architecture at all. So when they asked me to write something on Foucault I wrote this book. It’s a brief text. Obviously it could have been a huge book but it was part of a series of small books looking at these issues.

PAST + FUTURE 31

Credits

First published in 2014 for

‘A residency at The British Pavilion as part of The 14th International Architecture Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia’ 26th September - 24th October 2014

Scotland + Venice is a partnership between:

Scotland + Venice was curated by:

Reiach and Hall Architects

Neil Gillespie OBELaura KinnairdLewis Thomson

The Research Groups

Past + Future - An Introduction

Neil Gillespie OBE

Laura KinnairdLewis Thomson

Group 01: ‘Being There, The Fierce and Beautiful World’

James Grimley

Chris Lowry

Fergus David

Sophie Crocker

Group 02: ‘Embedded Modernism’

Alan Hooper

David Page

Andrew FrameChristopher DoveFraser MaitlandJamie Whelan

Group 03: ‘Land Works’

Fergus Purdie

Rowan Mackinnon-Pryde

Ashley Tosh

William Purdie

Group 04: ‘Outsiders’

Samuel Penn

Cameron McEwan

Penny Lewis

Hugh Lawson

Volha Druhakova

RSA (Elect) FRIAS RIBA, Design Director, Reiach and Hall Architects, Visiting Professor, Scott Sutherland School of Architecture & Built Environment, Robert Gordon UniversityAssociate, Reiach and Hall ArchitectsAssistant, Reiach and Hall Architects

Director, Reiach and Hall Architects, Part-time Studio Tutor at The Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (ESALA)Lecturer in Architecture, The Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (ESALA)The Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (ESALA)The Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (ESALA)

Architect, Programme Leader, Department of Architecture, The Glasgow School of ArtArchitect at Page/Park Architects, Visiting Professor, University of StrathclydeUniversity of StrathclydeThe Glasgow School of ArtUniversity of StrathclydeThe Glasgow School of Art

RSA (Elect), Architect at Fergus Purdie Architects, Part-time Studio Tutor School of the Environment, University of DundeeArchitect at Reiach and Hall Architects, Associate AE Foundation Associate, Editor of MatzineScott Sutherland School of Architecture & Built Environment, Robert Gordon UniversityUniversity of Strathclyde

Lecturer in Architecture, Scott Sutherland School of Architecture & Built Environment, Robert Gordon University, AE Foundation Co-founder and DirectorLecturer in History and Theory of the City, Architectural Design Tutor, AE Foundation AssociateLecturer in Architectural History, Scott Sutherland School of Architecture & Built Environment, Robert Gordon University, AE Foundation Co-founder and DirectorScott Sutherland School of Architecture & Built Environment, Robert Gordon UniversityScott Sutherland School of Architecture & Built Environment, Robert Gordon University

Partners

© Scotland + Venice 2014All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in retrieval systems or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission by Reiach and Hall Architects.

Reiach and Hall Architects6 Darnaway StreetEdinburghEH3 6BG

Printed by Sharman & Company Ltd.

Note: Every reasonable attempt has been made to identify owners of copyright. The publishers apologise for any omissions that may have inadvertently been made.

with additional support from:

Chief Architect, Planning & Architecture Division Scottish GovernmentPrincipal Architect, Planning & Architecture Division Scottish GovernmentPortfolio Manager - Visual ArtsCreative ScotlandVisual Arts AdvisorBritish Council Scotland

Further to those listed Scotland + Venice 2014 would also like to thank additional members of the partner organisations Les Scott_ The Scottish Government, Esther Hutcheson_The Scottish Government, Alistair Donald_British Council, Gwendoline Webber_British Council, Camile Mateos_British Council, Morag Bain_Architecture + Design Scotland, Anja Ekelof_Architecture + Design Scotland

For reference and use of Building Scotland, Past + Future, A Cautionary Guide by Alan Reiach and Robert Hurd in 1944, we thank Jim Tough and The Saltire Society, Edinburgh

We also thank our partners in Venice: M+B Studio SRL, Endar, Francesco Raccanelli_The British Pavilion

Finally we thank all those who have either contributed or assisted in the publications and events: Reiach and Hall Architects, Miles Glendinning_ESALA, Margaret Richards, Chris Rankin_rankinfraser landscape architects, Angus Farquhar_NVA, Dr Jonathan Charley_University of Strathclyde, Ellis Woodman_ Architects Journal, Murray Grigor, Toby Paterson, Irvine Welsh, Rebecca Wober_Studio DuB, Katherine Ross_Timeline Films, John Barr, Mark Baines, Professor Andy MacMillan OBE, Frank Walker, Seán McAlister_Matzine, Stephen Mackie_Matzine, Jamie Bell_Jamie Bell Design, Rory Cavanagh, Emanuel Petit, Sven-Olov Wallenstein, Dirk van den Heuvel, Fergus Denoon, Michael Wolchover_A Slight Shift, Norma Shewan, Derry Menzies Robertson and John Barber.

Ian Gilzean

Sandy Robinson

Amanda Catto

Juliet Dean

Advisory Panel

Anderson Bell Christie Architects and Architecture + Design ScotlandCity Design Adviser, Glasgow City CouncilLecturer in Architectural History, Scott Sutherland School of Architecture & Built Environment, Robert Gordon University, AE Foundation Co-founder and DirectorHead of the Mackintosh School of ArtHistoric ScotlandDo Architecture

Karen Anderson (Chair)

Gerry Grams

Penny Lewis

Professor Christopher PlattRanald MacInnesAdrian Stewart

Past + Future

Scotland + Venice

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darottya.czako@gmail.comvioletalcaid@gmail.comh.veraroza@gmail.comgiulia.guerrini@yahoo.itfrop34@hotmail.itvgo.riso@gmail.comlovesheepsophia@163.comandrea.bottini@sunrise.chjosephredpath@gmail.comtim.kammasch@bfh.chvincent.bianchi@epfl.cholivier.monteial@epfl.chcedric.wehrle@epfl.chmarion.stephan@live.frrita@ritalisbcea.comlara.bessar@gmail.commadeline.paulo@gmail.comilseim1711@hotmail.commargoux.ovayoun@gmail.commarlene.fantoni@gmail.comdargent.christophe@gmail.comsfourness@gmail.commelanie-tische@web.decharlotte.kleime@hotmail.dejosh.murphy@usi.chsschoales@gmail.comf.zappini@gmail.combeatrice@magnus-weibel.comtomljenovic.maja@gmail.comtamja-udovc@gmail.comivana_zrilec@yahoo.combarbara.hubeny@inet.hrfurazhkin.a@gmail.comben.bonnard@gmail.comandrea.maretto@gmail.comgregorio.martini@yahoo.itlaura.bellmico@gmail.comsimon.ruey@bluewin.chjuliette.contat@epfl.cholivier.faber@epfl.chcoccinella.fp@libero.ityolk316@naver.comeduar.lopez@hotmail.comguido.ca@gmail.commvendrell@gmail.commark.taylor@newcastle.edn.aukimpeach@naver.commichela.romano@usi.chdegirolamo.barbara@gmail.comhatoeren@gmail.comcamillef.lefeule@gmail.comeliasalcedoquiles@gmail.comdanieldiezausias@gmail.commuraro@rsi-studio.comc.lippi@stud.iuar.itinfo@folipesoares.arq.btbocciamick@gmail.comdr.ralf.dorn@veb.dec.paiagon@yahoo.frnetsum7@hotmail.comaa733@cam.ac.ukmogens.morgen@aarch.dkwildpet78@yahoo.comtobymassawe@gmail.compluszarch@gmail.commisstararyan@gmail.comsveva.ventze@hotmail.itbuparcmanon@gmail.comfrancoisemmanuelpain@gmail.coms.giamarelos.12@ucl.ac.uklutz.miriam@gmail,combobbo.p@gmx.dedagmar.vogt-seadler@stadt-neuss.demadalina.musat@live.comjarmi@post.czmarie-guelfow@hotmail.comw.prinz@chello.atw.mcmahon@live.co.ukrussalo.nicole@gmail.comzowenmo@hotmail.ittobrbacrive83@gmail.comhazelgulson@gmail.comegtomba@gmail.commitsuyo.delcourt@gmail.commaxi@schobers.atblertable.copa@gmail.comccsayday@gmail.comerifi@gmx.netmichael@trolleystudio.co.ukbaudezoo3@libero.itfrancesce.ginricin@live.itgianwcaranno@gmail.comchristophwagher@gmail.comjuliakaltengger@gmail.comguifridagp@gmail.combturkich@hotmail.comkatinasutglu@gmail.comalebatt@hotmail.it jyy627@hotmail.comelin_gardengors@hotmail.comkatharine.wienen@wet.deronaldlct@gmail.com

sarah.tingxu@hotmail.comchristian.f.miller@gmail.comjennifer.wong@live.deariana@hapticthought.comjuergen.jinjimser@uni-due.delilli.h@web.detudoll.pape@gmail.comortrun.bargholz@web.decaterine.b.b@gmail.compqolago007@gmail.comaffila.izeles@yahoo.comohmarinus@gmail.commailoan.guadez@gmail.compuzma119@gmail.commaygas@gmail.comfrederiquealbert@hotmail.comromyedidia@gmail.com natashaoduber101@hotmail.comvibeke@gieskesirinakoedrt@gmx.des.utech@web.oesobcstuff@gmail.comeuan@speirandmajor.comram.euache@gmail.comnadarwexler@yahoo.commarketing.promotion@reside.etuder.frsija.glomb@uni-weimar.demeyo.julia@uni-weimer.dem.giuliani@bgp.chgabriellamuto@gmail.comandrea.interbergeva@gmx.netjudith@judithklaus.detandiRD@hotmail.comamnondai@gmail.comluisaheld@outlook.comalbaminguez@gmail.comfrey-reimers@gmx.demarie-theres.weiss@uni-weimar.dejma.boutet@free.fraga@gnet.com.perosso17@bluewin.chcordelia.keston@btinternet.comrfrankles@internet.ludearchitectura@mail.comfrancescauannin@gmail.comludo.bruni@hotmail.itlutz.miriam@gmail.comnicholassteele@hotmail.comr.mantho@gsa.ac.ukr.oconnell@hotmail.co.ukLeoni.jong@web.deantonia.treccafuoli@hotmail.itbergur@r21.nomark_craig@hotmail.comloriana.dalpra@gmail.comnaimacallenberg@gmail.comelena.gionelloni@gmail.comstudio@edyquaglie.chandrea@quail.chsven@zwischeutaeume.deheike.ryli@alice.dsl.de5b_liceoamaldi@liceoamaldi.pov.itmargafritaquintoarchitetto@gmail.comhongdi.li@studio-lux.co.ukamunday@atelier-am.eupeter@dhk.co.zuhelene@cd-esau.decarlo_ferretti@hotmail.itlugiand@hotmail.itvalentinavviscardi@live.ithaehnir@student.ethz.chsibilla.f@gmail.comasmiderle@hotmail.comrobert.susan@virgin.netmarika.3097@gmail.comcutuliteresa@gmail.comssai@havet.comjsgiulia@gmail.comdrgpepe@doctors.org.ukgiara.gut@gmail.com1986falko@web.denicowehner@gmail.comalbertrichter@gmail.comv-leowald@cees.demathiermhiocller@gmail.comaloisly@gmt.nethrs030214@navar.compa.kalantzis@gmail.combulbo-m@hotmail.comgeorgeffa.arch@gmail.comsplish@me.comk.townshend@me.comcs_imre@yahoo.co.ukdebora.marino88@libero.it jlenia.esposibo@gmail.commichelarusso.m@libero.itc.worschech@worschecharcitects.comkliman.iva@gmail.com alice_olivier@tascali.itgiulietta.quenda@gmail.comale__28@hotmail.itfedericopicech93@pmdie.com

elenoredh@gmail.comstenek.angelo@alicebotts@mng.chaynuraras04@gmail.comannalisaf92@virgilio.itantonella.mollo@hotmail.ita.maiascioei@hotmail.itsovuej.92@hotmail.itdie.costantini@gmail.compierpaolo_aleandri@virgilio.itmimnurcangunes@gmail.comfigenisiker@gmail.comklara.b90@hotmail.itsusanne.kremer@gmx.netcesarecascella@gmail.comgst05244@bigpond.net.aueworkel@rocketmail.comitzepel@hotmail.competrovcic.jani@gmail.comberit.slaattum@hisf.noondrey.hofmeister@projectil.ctkatja.marinic00@gmail.comjmarklj@yahoo.comrossella.martinelli@tiscali.itmarra.paob@gmail.comnpost.mpa@gmail.comannarita_venditti@hotmail.itvalentinik-46@hotmail.itchiaradip@hotmail.itfraioli.alberto@gmail.comvukmrovic_jeleua@yahoo.comlidijaslivko@gmail.comgiugiama@hotmail.itflaflafla1@naver.combobbie.sedlmayer@gmail.comjuliaheslop@hotmail.comschacher@bbarc.chandreasoberhuber@gmx.dehelioherbst@hotmail.comaaa.architects@gmail.coms.simon.ostan@alice.itsc@deage.sealon@abn-arch.co.ukmichabanolini@macace.netalexi@aleximarmot.comsigrid40@gmx.dealbertina.depelsmacker@gmail.comgustavkvnieisten@gmail.comadrugariglio@gmail.comfederica.bertoncini@gmail.compoon.s@hustey.nev.eduli.pei@husky.neu.eduschoof@detail.depietro_teto@hotmail.itjosephrigo.iii@gmail.comelvirabergman@hotmail.comvibekevildbrad@hotmail.combl.architekten@bluewin.chluigi.russo@unite.itnicolanett@gigernett.chhatan@studiowta.comchiara_morganti@hotmail.comsaaapa@hotmailittine@mauriz.bed.petrov.petar@gmail.commzorraguimo@argyimex.elalexandre.piufepe@gmail.comk.bailey@vam.ac.uks.schiazzamo@gmail.comgagloardo.raffaele@gmail.comfaes.thomas@gmail.comlug.eizzuto@alice.itpimlarch@libero.itvale_hfh@hotmail.comlaurabangueses@gmail.comandrea.tusell@gmail.comisabellagmadureira@gmail.comastrid.reiter@hotmail.comiolellianchi@gmail.comfsk.sjodin@gmail.comgabot.juto@gmail.comi24bel@mac.commkinfo5@interia.plantonioluca@nvrdv.comjt@hot-architekt.en.defede.grott@libero.itanna.bernardi.ab@gmail.comtobias.baitsch@epfl.chysoftas@gmail.comvincenzotuccillo@hotmail.itevi_zouzoula@hotmail.comdcristo@hotmail.itmirna.yiha@gmail.coman.dimoulabi@gmail.comhughqueenan@gmail.comblainecagney@gmail.comralphiekeane@hotmail.comc.fabbretti@alice.itmariaimbrigliati@gmail.iturvashu@graven.co.ukrenee@graven.co.ukstefyloliva@gmail.com

claudia.cola92@gmail.comazzurracered@gmail.comchigholilaura@yahoo.comla.minole@gmail.commartysto@hotmail.comsmiceoli83@gmail.comcarle.paul@ugam.calr.lonjoroberta@gmail.comyoushu89@gmail.comdalila-polatto@alice.itmarika.griffo@gmail.comandrearosello@gmail.comkvlebedeva@mail.rutinakatharina@gmail.commariotti_elisabette@alice.itf.serrao@hotmail.comangelo.gigliotti@yahoo.itrichard@perronethouse.comlyla@perronethouse.comjulieroberts@me.comkirabrown@gmail.cominara.nevskaya@gmail.comnadine_aschenbach@gmx.dearianna.nobile@yahoo.esinfo@benvenutiacorte.comsimona.miron90@yahoo.eshamidfara@hotmail.comdavid.leguillermic@berlin.dedavies.paul@hotmail.comskng@hkbu.edn.hk.amail@osterwold-schmidt.delucy.sloof@gmail.comeleonozecrusin@gmail.comfbz.maztine@gmail.compaolo.sol@gmail.commaumoroni@yahoo.itsmaguire632@gmail.commaria.parsaielli89@gmail.comulmann@windowslive.comangelasab85@gmail.comseroslula@msn.comandrea.panoe@gmail.comsamsaramira@yahoo.comcatherinelawlor89@gmail.comrosepickles@hotmail.co.ukf.tindall2@gmail.comdoretti.giulia@gmail.combeatrice.facciani@gmail.coma.c.n.vanbeuselcom@uu.nlj-blume@hotmail.deinfo@atelierpanda.it pricillavalgimigli@me.comcarmen.bolanos@gmail.comkarolina@diffusionstudio.co.ukslgalbun@gmail.compaolasilvestrini@litealatente.comliaoyusliong@yahoo.comparelmachor@email.czerik.starman@gmail.comilariarondi@yahoo.itkarol@xprnc.plpolluptn@hotmailcomkirkrushby@yahoo.comclairemcmenamin@hotmail.comniamhmurphy86@hotmail.comnowbrasil@hotmail.comclaire.e.harper@gmail.comjen.wang@mac.compowang54@icloud.compaul.longshaw@jacobs.combridget.hansford@artdesignhull.ac.ukjosh_thetigers1904@live.co.ukkjwheeler@miami.eduakerlacher@gmail.comairey90@hotmail.comerikafaies@hbf.choffice@adaconcept.nowiedemann@studio.e10.detcowell92@googlemail.comrobbo_fsas@live.cominfo@themusitect.comevil.verporte@gmail.comfafuirnwe@gmail.comsubotic.taras@gmail.commarghe_bacci@yahoo.itenlacasadecor@hotmail.comgiorgio-pesenti@hotmail.it hanne-koenij@yahoo.debeate-majer@gmx.deppavanett@yahoo.itveronika.mutalova@gmail.comletitia.artiolo@virgilio.itanil@cavvia.netmantouanigiuli@gmail.comgaia.coriglione@hotmail.itdaniela.livaccari@gmail.comvlada.v@hotmail.commaz.blagojevic.4@gmail.comjelena-grunge@gmail.comanamarijakorkanovic@yahoo.commirka.mihaslovic@hotmail.compablo.phillips@gmail.com

joselvifanos@gmail.comagnese.pompili@gmail.comspidermanspashavasvet@hotmail.commarko.novipocetak.ilic7@gmail.comyana.habibi@gmail.comallegretti.federica@alice.itsalvador.adieu@gmail.comfergom@hotmail.comrebel.hamza@yahoo.comrowingb@gmail.cominfo@burgessadams.comleticiagatienza@gmail.commarc@bobeatson.comtaici@gmail.comzamashu@gmail.com girord-cha@crange.frsandiaescattia@gmail.comtomas@tomasdegenar.comtruels@mplusb.eusue.martin@bcot.ac.uksue.riley@bcot.ac.ukbemily.porter@gmail.commeganhuggins_@hotmail.co.ukmichelvamtilborg@tiscali.ncyeny_9413_@hotmail.itdina1996dream@gmail.coml.volmarsson@live.seclaasbanmann@gmail.comalice.camerio@gmail.comjonathan.bonnassieux@gmail.commartinogandenghi96@gmail.comgcantuaria@hotmail.comsignesignes@hotmail.comcinqueasia@gmail.comclaudia@teksiger.deorioror@hotmail.comcamillevierin@gmail.comlombinog@gmail.comeditionsmemo@editionsmemo.frpegabbieni@gmail.comgiullia.ariotto@gmail.comireneannoe@hotmail.itpjeccies@uclan.ac.uk dario.guazzo@gmail.comnbsimkins@uclan.ac.uksoujabradas@gmail.comvian1494@edu.kadk.dknina.zecevic@hotmail.combelooshi@gmail.combelguedj.a@gmail.commaialmoataz@gmail.comeaj2@rice.edukeo2@rice.eduryanince@gmail.comeb65135a@yahoo.den.dunning@live.comluishilti@gmail.comsherry@lawrence@gmail.comjnjoo@paris-lavillette.archi.frmdunc89@hotmail.co.ukpeder.duelund@kadk.dkkaupert@ppp_archipomon.demacqvei_mibai@ymail.comarchitecht@yahoo.comotm820313@gmail.comgilly.etienne@gmail.commp.chaparrog@gmail.comclemens_mock@gmx.etbeatrizhg@hotmail.esnibonalso@gmail.combirgit@gmail.comzenoardelean@gmail.combrian@loudldesign.co.ukallenomise@gmail.comaessia.eda@libero.ityvesmichaud@me.comdavidhill1948@sky.comalykhan.neky@gmail.comsophie.wolfrum@tum.dejulia_0112@126.commail@rodger-mandl.dekrzbm@iastatw.eduhannes.seifert@studio.uhigo.itmarythomas-mamthoma@ucsc.eduardito.mar@gmail.comanst_atoll@mail.ruberdnikova@ostarch.ruandrea.conti17@gmail.comburakpekoglu@gmail.comconnect@rzc3.usmartina.orecchini@hotmail.itdefne@caferbozkurt.com.tr53639199@frudeiun.unige.itlinda.consiglier@gmail.comanna.ivaldiAI@gmail.comtuppi.antonella@gmail.comelena.spadea@live.comelizabethbishop_1@hotmailolgietomara@gmail.comjens_met@hotmail.comgloria.dg@libero.it

During the four weeks in Venice Groups made a series of connections with visitors to the Biennale: