Aprendendo para mudar, mudando para aprender

Região metropolitana de Belo Horizonte recebe novo aerolevantamento

Região metropolitana de Belo Horizonte recebe novo aerolevantamento

correção trabalhos teoria do urbanismo grupo 12: novas centralidades + generic city

excelente pesquisa de fontes filmográficas. sugiro fazer um texto para uma postagem próxima resumindo a reportagem recente de RK à folha de são paulo sobre o atual momento de sua teoria da cidade genérica.
para iniciar a segunda etapa do trabalho sugiro um post respondendo à seguinte pergunta: qual a relação entre a arquitetura do espetáculo (guy debord) e a cidade genérica(rem koolhaas)?

Generic City: Urbanismo L.A. - documentário visual

Generic City: Urbanismo L.A. - documentário visual: Zameer Basrai foi o arquiteto que idealizou e criou este documentário, Este é um relato cronológico das idéias desenvolvidas durante o ...

Generic City: Documentário sobre Hong Kong: "Maiores cidades do ...

Generic City: Documentário sobre Hong Kong: "Maiores cidades do ...: http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=BR&hl=pt&v=4tn00bgo7O8 Esse documentario mostra Griff Rhys Jones experimentando um dia de vida n a cid...

Generic City: Documentário sobre Hong Kong: "Maiores cidades do ...

Generic City: Documentário sobre Hong Kong: "Maiores cidades do ...: http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=BR&hl=pt&v=4tn00bgo7O8 Esse documentario mostra Griff Rhys Jones experimentando um dia de vida n a cid...

Generic City: Cidade Genérica (Questao 2)

Generic City: Cidade Genérica (Questao 2): A cidade genérica é uma cidade em transformação. Seu estrato urbano esta em constante renovação sendo movido por uma lógica f...

Generic City: Decompondo Los Angeles por uma geografia pós-moder...

Generic City: Decompondo Los Angeles por uma geografia pós-moder...: Los Angeles é fragmentada em grande diversidade o que a torna uma cidade difícil de ser abarcada. É uma cidade global, em parte alguma is...

Generic City: Da cidade genérica ao espaço genérico.

Generic City: Da cidade genérica ao espaço genérico.: Da cidade genérica ao espaço genérico A cidade construída por Koolhaas em seu livro é destituída de identidade. O arquiteto constrói em seu...

Generic City: Los Angeles - Cidade Genérica

Generic City: Los Angeles - Cidade Genérica: Rem Koolhaas diz " A cidade genérica é a cidade liberada do cativeiro central, da camisa de força da identidade [...] ela é nada senão uma...

Generic City: Primeiro "Post"

Generic City: Primeiro "Post": Bom, este blog é um instrumento de apresentação de trabalho onde tema deste mesmo é denominado Cidade Genérica (Generic City). Estaremos ...

correção trabalhos teoria do urbanismo: grupo 6 - Reconversão urbana

congonhas e florenca: sugiro fazer uma leitura detalhada do livro da choay, alegoria do patrimônio, e dos títulos já citados do argan. o foco da pesquisa vocês já estabeleceram, demonstraram ter feito uma pesquisa  de compromisso. agora preciso avaliar suas conclusões sobre as leituras indicadas. por exemplo, façam uma sequência de  postagens mostrando as definições de patrimônio em argan e choay. usem suas imagens para ilustrar. bom começo de segunda etapa!
todas as questões respondidas de modo adequado!

Caminho da Toscana: Desde sempre e até quando? – Parte 2

Caminho da Toscana: Desde sempre e até quando? – Parte 2: A segunda cidade em estudo e análise é Florença, localizada na região da Toscana, Itália. Uma cidade muito conhecida e visitada por causa ...

Caminho da Toscana: Desde sempre e até quando? – Parte 1

Caminho da Toscana: Desde sempre e até quando? – Parte 1: “Nenhuma grande cidade brasileira escapa a esse destino de exclusão, se gregação, e degradação ambi ental.” (Ermínia Maricato ). Nos at...

correção dos trabalhos teoria do urbanismo: grupo 10 - NORTE a SUL

conferir o blog do grupo
http://bhnorteasul.blogspot.com/
um bom exemplo para referenciar a organizacão das informações gráficas, o uso de várias mídias e pesquisa diversificada.
questão 2: insuficiente. faltou demonstrar leitura mais aprofundada dos textos trabalhados em sala.

Norte a sul: Provos; A história de um grupo de jovens que inven...

Norte a sul: Provos; A história de um grupo de jovens que inven...: Quando li essa história confesso que a primeira coisa que me veio em mente foi: Amsterdam é o lugar ideal para revoluções popular...

Norte a sul: Rotterdam

Norte a sul: Rotterdam: Rotterdam consiste em 11 regiões metropolitanas: Charlois, Delfshaven, Feijenoor d ,Hillegersberg-Schiebroek , Camionete Holland de Hoek...

Norte a sul: Formação do Vetor Norte

Norte a sul: Formação do Vetor Norte: Na década de 50 com a criação do Complexo da Pampulha ocorreu simultaneamente o desenvolvimento e ocupação do Vetor Norte, empreendimento q...

Norte a sul: Vetor Sul; Região que cresce sem planejamento

Norte a sul: Vetor Sul; Região que cresce sem planejamento: Mapa base do Vetor Sul de Belo Horizonte Região com grande potencial de crescimento populacional e econômico, o Vetor Sul da Região Met...

ofina na puc minas - indicadores

na PUC Minas, o Observatório de Políticas Urbanas (OPUR) está promovendo a "Oficina de Extensão: Seminário Internacional sobre Indicadores Urbanos"

- Coordenação: Profa. Dra. Maria Inês Nahas

- Local: Auditório 01, Prédio 04

- Data: 31 de agosto de 2011

- Horário: 14 às 17 hs

- Pauta:

1- Abertura: Profa. Maria Inês Nahas

2- Apresentação da ProEx e do OPUR: Profa. Rita Velloso

3- Palestra: "Indicadores Sociais para o planejamento público: tendências e desafios"- Profa. Maria Inês Nahas

Os alunos participantes receberão certificado.

Os interessados em atuar na organização do seminário internacional, deverão entregar o Curriculum Vitae durante a oficina. Dentre estes serão selecionados 3 bolsistas de Iniciação Científica com financiamento do CNPq (Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico).

para todos os meus alunos

ROSELY SAYÃO

É SÓ UMA FACULDADE, GENTE!

Qualquer curso pode ser feito por qualquer jovem. Mesmo. De preferência, um que não o faça sofrer muito

NESTE MOMENTO, muitos jovens estão preocupados ou ansiosos em demasia com o que os espera no futuro próximo em relação aos estudos.
São eles os que irão iniciar o ensino médio no próximo ano letivo e os que estão prestes a terminar o mesmo ciclo. O motivo? A escolha que terão de fazer para o ingresso na faculdade.
Eles acreditam existir um curso -UM!- que dará sentido à vida profissional deles. A escolha que farão terá de ser, portanto, exata, precisa. Não podem errar, não podem vacilar, não podem hesitar. Essa decisão, tomada perto dos 17 anos, deverá ser definitiva.
E dá-lhe orientação profissional, vocacional e coisa que o valha. Apesar disso, bem perto dos 45 minutos do segundo tempo, a maioria deles estará indecisa.
E mesmo os que fizerem uma escolha duvidarão dela rapidamente. Cerca de 40% dos universitários desistem do curso que escolheram no primeiro ano da faculdade.
O que foi que fizemos com os jovens para que eles caíssem nessa roubada? Contamos historias fantásticas a respeito da vida adulta profissional, construímos fábulas muito bem estruturadas sobre a vida e o trabalho, apontamos o êxito como meta de vida, associamos prazer no trabalho com felicidade, não é verdade? Isso sem falar no conto da vocação.
E eles sofrem com as dúvidas mais do que certas que surgem nessa hora. Claro! Em um mundo com tantas profissões novas somadas às tradicionais mais as já desgastadas etc., o que priorizar?
Depois, como reagimos quando eles entram na faculdade e não conseguem se comprometer mais com os estudos nem dar sentido ao que estão fazendo e comunicam isso de maneira um tanto quanto desajeitada?
Sentimos pena deles por terem de fazer uma escolha tão importante na vida assim, precocemente.
É por isso que virou moda, na faixa de população com alto poder aquisitivo, fazer o filho tirar um ano sabático antes de escolher a faculdade e prestar o vestibular. 
"É um tempo bom para amadurecer", me disse um pai. Mas não é justamente para isso que serve toda a adolescência? Então, por que fizemos tanta pressão nos primeiros anos da vida deles? Por que exigimos que eles rendessem nos estudos na fase em que deveriam brincar? Talvez o sabático seja uma compensação que queremos oferecer em relação aos anos de infância que roubamos deles, não é verdade?
O fato é que esses filhos que foram jogados no mundo do conhecimento sistematizado ainda na primeira infância, fortemente poupados da realidade o tempo todo, impedidos de crescer na segunda parte da infância e abandonados aos seus caprichos na adolescência não conseguem nem sequer enxergar o mundo em que eles vivem.
Esse mundo, que muda tão rapidamente, tão pleno de diversidades, complexidades e possibilidades, permite um leque enorme de trabalho dentro de uma mesma profissão. Então, por que tanto drama para escolher um curso?
Qualquer curso pode ser feito por qualquer jovem. Qualquer mesmo. De preferência, um que não imponha a ele sofrimento demais considerando suas habilidades, seus interesses e suas preferência pessoais.
E depois? Ora, chegada a maturidade, sempre há saídas virtuosas e honrosas para qualquer um. É só uma questão de comprometimento, de responsabilidade consigo mesmo, de esforço e perseverança. Mas tudo isso tem sido uma moeda rara na atualidade.
Vamos facilitar a vida dos mais novos, vamos tornar essa escolha menos importante. Um curso universitário é só um curso, apenas isso. Jamais será definitivo na vida de alguém.
Fazer o curso do começo ao fim, com todas as dificuldades, os dissabores e as frustrações encontrados no percurso é que pode ser algo valioso para o amadurecimento do jovem, muito mais do que o curso escolhido.
Simples assim.

nova babilonia 2

• “Constant always saw New Babylon as a realizable project, which provoked intense debates at schools of architecture and fine arts about the future role of the architect. Constant insisted that the traditional arts would be displaced by a collective form of creativity. He positioned his project at the threshold of the end of art and architecture. Yet it had a major influence on the work of subsequent generations of architects. It was published widely in the international press in the 1960s and Constant quickly attained a prominent position in the world of experimental architecture. But this influence would eventually be forgotten; the project has not been displayed since Constant stopped working on it in 1974.“
• source
  Text by Mark Wigley from ‘New Babylon. The Hyper-architecture of Desire

nova babilonia

Sociólogo desmonta matéria da Globo contra jovens britânicos - Portal Vermelho

Sociólogo desmonta matéria da Globo contra jovens britânicos - Portal Vermelho

para teoria do urbanismo: comecando a ler sobre as cidades no século xix

para ler sobre as cidades e o capital, desde marx

teoria da deriva no seu caminho

"Não há algo como uma obra situacionista, mas um uso situacionista da obra".

[GUGOLPLEX]*

talking of a different city

Nec Plus Ultra

Auggie's story

Christmas tale by Paul Auster in the movie Smoke

Impactos do turismo na metropolização nordestina

Impactos do turismo na metropolização nordestina

para ler com olhos atentos

The jargon of authenticity. Modernism and its (non)political position

Hilde Heynen

Introduction

Before World War 2, modernism in architecture was clearly ingrained with leftist ideas. Although not all modernist architects were really interested or active in the political arena, the dominant tendency within the pre-war CIAM went quite far in advocating ideas such as collective living or giving priority to public over private housing. After the war this situation changed, because modernists in the West could usually not afford to be considered defending ‘communist’ ideas. In the United States the Cold War condition resulted in the emergence of a ‘high modernism’ that was associated with individualism, consumerism and corporate industrialism. In Western Europe the establishment of the welfare state led to a slightly different situation. Modernist architects became either active in the planning and design of huge public programs (housing being one of them), or they concentrated on the development of sophisticated designs for individual homes. Whereas the public housing programs rapidly turned into purely technocratic undertakings, the shift towards individual homes was partially justified through a discourse on authenticity (vaguely inspired by Heidegger and other philosophers). This discourse considered the relationship between the individual and the mass in cultural rather than political terms. It was nevertheless instrumental in a Cold War that was fought not just on military and political grounds but also on the battlefield of the home. The home was turned into a site that, thanks to its level of commodities and comfort, proved the superiority of the West’s political system that promoted individual ownership. This resulted in an awkward position for those modernist architects who adhered to the left wing of the political spectrum, since their leftist political ideas were no longer compatible with the intellectual tendencies dominant in modernist architectural discourse.

The political position: Walter Benjamin and Karl Teige

The leftist position of early modernism can best be demonstrated by referring to the interpretations developed by Walter Benjamin and Karl Teige. Walter Benjamin, influenced by Marxist and messianic ideas, interpreted the architecture of the Modern Movement as heralding the coming of a new, classless society. Whereas the nineteenth century, according to him, had given prominence to the cultivation of a private existence in the enclosure of abundantly decorated interiors, the twentieth century put forward a totally different ideal of dwelling:

"The 20th century with its porosity and transparency, its longing for light and air put an end to dwelling in the old sense of the word. (...) Art Nouveau shook the etui existence to its foundations. By now it is deceased and dwelling is reduced: for the living by hotel bedrooms, for the dead by crematoria." (quoted in Heynen 1999, 113)

A new architecture was flourishing, an architecture that, with its qualities of transparency and spatial interpenetration, anticipated the new society to come. Benjamin perceived the porosity of modern architecture as the spatial prefiguration of a future social condition. He linked spatial interpenetration and transparency with the openness and flexibility that would be characteristic of a new form of society:

"Giedion, Mendelsohn, Corbusier turned the abiding places of man into a transit area for every conceivable kind of energy and for electric currents and radio waves. The time that is coming will be dominated by transparency." (quoted in Heynen 1999, 114)

According to Benjamin, the new transparency instructed individuals to adapt to new conditions of life that have more to do with transience and instability than with permanence and being rooted. Things would no longer be available for individual appropriation and consumption. The sober and smooth aspect of Neue Sachlichkeit interiors rather pointed towards collective use, anonymity and emancipation. Dwelling would no longer be recorded in ineradicable imprints, but would be accommodated in changeable constructions and transitory interiors with hard and smooth surfaces. Glass in important in this respect, for it connotes for Benjamin transparency and openness:

“It is not a coincidence that glass is so hard and smooth a material to which nothing can be fastened. It is also cold and sober. Things that are made of glass have no 'aura'. Glass is the enemy par excellence of secrecy. It is also the enemy of property." (quoted in Heynen 1999, 115)

Benjamin regarded glass as a material that literally expresses the transparency of the new society that would be founded on revolutionary lines. Elsewhere he confirms that

"To live in a glass house is a revolutionary virtue par excellence." (quoted in Heynen 1999, 116)

Benjamin implied that, because it is inimical to secrecy and property, glass should be regarded as a material that literally expresses the transparency of the new society that would be founded on revolutionary lines. A society of this sort, he claimed, has the political 'radioscopy' of sexuality and the family, as well as of the economic and physical conditions of existence, as part of its programme and therefore it is completely uninterested in protecting privacy in the home.

The transparency and openness of the New Building thus pointed for Benjamin to a revolutionary, classless society based upon emancipation and flexibility. He interpreted the New Building as part of the avant-garde’s attack on bourgeois culture. Just like surrealism and constructivism, it was preparing humankind for a new life to come. The New Building schooled inhabitants and users to adapt to new social conditions, which prefigured the future transparent society.

Karl Teige, the Czech poet and architectural critic, argued along similar lines in his 1932 book The Minimum Dwelling. Teige’s position was that of a convinced Marxist as well as an advocate of modern architecture. Having attended the 1929 CIAM congress in Frankfurt and the 1931 one in Brussels, he was familiar with European modernism and its solutions to the housing problem. He refused, however, to deal with housing as just a matter of adequate architectural models or planning regulations. According to him, the housing problem was deeply rooted in the basic structures of the capitalist system itself, and only a political revolution could therefore offer a real solution. As far as he was concerned, all the efforts of modern architects to develop new ideas and plans could only come to fruition in a new social system based upon the collective possession of the production apparatus.

He nevertheless underlined how modern architecture’s new types contributed to the progressive development of dwelling patterns. Teige differentiated between four historical stages of dwelling. In the primitive dwelling everything is contained within a single universal dwelling space of undifferentiated functions. The second stage is a negation of this primitive dwelling. This second stage refers to the most developed bourgeois model of dwelling in which all the functions – economic, social and biological ones – have been differentiated and delegated to a specific room. The third stage, the ‘proletarian abode’ or the dwelling of the classes of the subsistence minimum, is the negation of this first negation, containing only the bare minimum of a sleeping place. The fourth and final stage foresees a ‘collectivist reconstruction of dwelling’ in which all the functions are centralized and collectivized, except for the individual live-in cells. This is the path that, according to Teige, modern architecture is prefiguring, as exemplified in works of Ernst May, Le Corbusier, Eileen Gray or Mosei Ginsburg (Dom Kommuna).

Like Walter Benjamin, Teige read architectural space as evidence of social conditions. He quoted at length the analyses by Marx and Engels arguing that the structure of the bourgeois family was based upon the overt and hidden slavery of women. Women were obliged to take up the burden of domestic work, which prevented them from taking part in public production. Teige extended this analysis to the bourgeois dwelling:

“Not unlike the bourgeois family, the layout of the bourgeois dwelling is equally based on the enslavement of women (as an expression of that type of family). Today’s woman does not realize how oppressed she has become by this form of dwelling. Today’s family homes, whether villas or rental apartments, enslave the woman-housewife in equal measure with their uneconomical housekeeping routines. Private life in today’s dwellings is obliged to closely conform to the dictates of bourgeois marriage.” (Teige 2002, 170)

Because of this, Teige advocated that the new minimum dwelling for the working classes should be conceived of in a radically different way. Given the fact that proletarian families did not really have a family life anyhow – because the reality of production conditions forced them to devote too much time to commuting and working hours, so that the only time they spent at home was for sleeping – he argued that this situation should be taken as an opportunity to develop a new way of collective living. The minimum dwelling should thus contain for each adult a live-in cell with a bedroom annex sitting room, but without a kitchen or further facilities. All these facilities should be made available as collective services, the pattern of family life would thus be broken up and each individual, man as well as woman, could free him- or herself from this burden in order to fully exploit his or her potential for participation in public life. (Figure 1) His book explored several experimental schemes that work with such a new conception of dwelling, dealing with a lot of specific examples ranging from American ‘hotel skyscrapers’ over German and Swiss homes for single adults to dom-kommunas in Sovjet Russia.

Even if Benjamin’s and Teige’s interpretations were more radical than those of the majority of modernist architects, they nevertheless adequately formulated the ideological connotations that were widely spread in the twenties. Modernist architecture was perceived by many – its advocates as well as its critics – as embodying aspirations for a more egalitarian, just and emancipated society, where collectivity and anonymity would be more important than individualism and privacy. With its concern for the Existenzminimum and rational urban lay-outs, CIAM was pursuing a course that considered social issues such as mass housing of the utmost importance. This clear alliance between architectural and political ideals, however, would not be maintained indefinitely. It already shifted in the thirties and early forties, to give way to a completely different constellation in the aftermath of the Second World War.

The changing outlook after World War 2

The cultural climate during the Cold War period was severely affected by the political situation. Recent studies stress again and again how the Cold War was not just a matter of military and political campaigns, but was also conducted on the cultural front. The most obvious evidence for this intertwining of cultural and political forces can be found in the history of the ‘Congress for Cultural Freedom’, a CIA-sponsored organization that financed operas, orchestras, painters and other intellectuals to promote American culture abroad. (Saunders 2000) But also outside this most blatant form of political exploitation, there were many links between cultural production and political propaganda.[1] Edward Steichen’s acclaimed exhibition The Family of Man was a case in point. It consisted of 503 pictures, the work of 273 photographers covering 68 nations, and was first presented as an installation in the New York Museum of Modern Art in 1955. (Figure 2) Its aim was to clarify the universality of the condition of humankind, by depicting moving images of individuals and families across the globe, engaged in everyday acts which show their warmth, vulnerability and intimate connections. As Eric Sandeen points out, this exhibition became – unwittingly perhaps – an instrument in the hands of American foreign policy:

“As Steichen’s work moved abroad, it became part of the projection of American foreign policy goals. Wherever the national presence needed to be felt, the exhibition could be counted upon to reassure that American values were local values. (…) According to Allen Sekula, a critic of The Family of Man, the exhibition entered willingly into the cultural warfare against the Russians.”[2]

Another example of the entanglement of economic, political and cultural concerns can be found in the Hilton hotels built in Europe, Africa and the Near East. As Anabel Wharton points out, the construction of the Hilton International Hotels in a modern ‘American’ idiom did serve political and ideological purposes:

“That Hilton International hotels were political is not my hypothesis, but Conrad Hilton’s claim. Hilton explicitly represented his international hotels as ideological, in the popular sense of ideology as propaganda. He repeatedly reported that Hilton International hotels were constructed not only to produce a profit, but also to make a political statement on the host countries. In his autobiography he wrote: ‘Let me say right here, that we operate hotels abroad for the same reason we operate them in this country – to make money for our stockholders. … However, we feel that if we really believe in what we are all saying about liberty, about Communism, about happiness, that we, as a nation, must exercise our great strength and power for good against evil. If we really believe this, it is up to each of us, our organizations and our industries, to contribute to this objective with all the resources at our command.’” (Wharton 2001, 8)

The modernism of Conrad Hilton’s hotels was indeed a far cry from that defended by Benjamin and Teige. It shared with pre-war modernism the preference for sober, repetitive and non-ornamental forms, and for transparency. (Figure 3) The meanings that were attached to these forms however differed dramatically from those pursued by the early modernists. In the case of the Hilton hotels, modernism was moulded into an architectural style that conveyed ideas of comfort, luxury and monumentality. The hotels were positioned in their foreign locations as icons of American culture, where the luxuries of air conditioning and swimming pools could be enjoyed by those who could pay for them. By towering over their surroundings, they related to their environment only by way of spectacular views that guaranteed distance, isolation and superiority. For the local elite, who often invested in them, they functioned as islands of an affluent, postcolonial Western economy that harboured the promise of a peaceful world brought about by universal capitalism – regardless of the social inequalities and injustice that went along with it. American high modernism was thus forged into an anticommunist mode that was ideologically quite opposite to that of European early modernism.

The transformation of modernism was also visible in the trajectory followed by CIAM. A juxtaposition of the topics of the pre-war and post-war CIAM conferences is telling. Whereas the pre-war CIAMs focused on The Minimum Dwelling (Frankfurt 1929), Rational Lot Development (Brussels 1931) or The Functional City (Patris 1933), postwar meetings rather discussed a Synthesis of the Arts (Bergamo 1949), The Heart of the City (Hoddesdon 1951) or The Charter of Habitat (Aix-en-Provence 1953). Post-war CIAMs thus turned away from purely functional and technical concerns regarding mass housing and urban planning, to highlight more general and cultural themes related to issues of creativity, poetics and human well-being. This transformation was not completely unrelated to the political situation of the times.

Immediately after the war, Europe and the world had been divided into two spheres of influence, a Western one and a communist one. The impact of this division was visible on several fronts, including the cultural one. The official discourse of most countries in Eastern Europe thus became very critical of modernism in architecture. They mistrusted the Bauhaus legacy, declaring that it stood for an architecture which was formalist and imperialist. Anders Aman starts his book Architecture and Ideology in Eastern Europe during the Stalin Era with two telling quotations:

“Two camps are today realizing their contradictory world pictures and ideologies. On the one hand, the camp of democracy, socialism, and peace – with the Soviet Union as its main bastion – and on the other the camp of imperialism, economic crisis, and warmongering. The contest between these ideologies is also being waged in architecture.” (From a resolution adopted by the National Congress of Polish Architects, 20-21 June 1949)

“We are against the Bauhaus. Why? We are against the Bauhaus because Functionalism is the height of imperialist cosmopolitanism, the height of decadence and decay.” (Kurt Liebknecht at a cultural conference of the German-Soviet Friendship Union, 2-4 November 1951)

This rift is also visible within CIAM. Giedion documented for example an exchange between the Polish Helena Syrkus and the Italian Richard Rogers in the 1949 Bergamo meeting. Syrkus pleaded for an art that would respond to the needs of the people, and to that end one should have greater respect for the past and defend one’s national culture. Rogers on the other hand stressed the need for quality of art, and thought that people must be given the means to come near to art rather than that art would have to diminish itself in order to come near to the people. Thus respect for the past did not mean repetition of the past to him, but rather keeping its spirit alive. (Giedion 1958, 86-88) Between the lines of this exchange one can clearly discern how Syrkus’s argumentation was close to the doctrine of socialist realism, whereas Rogers values authenticity and timeliness, cultural values that were becoming more and more dominant in aesthetic discourses in the West.

In turning away from technical and quantifiable matters, CIAM thus shifted its focus towards themes that were more in line with what the West considered to be non-political concerns. If CIAM’s pre-war discourse bore socialist overtones, and could easily be read as an appeal to authorities to directly engage in mass housing and urban planning, its post-war debates centered more on aesthetic and cultural issues, staying away from concerns which could be deemed directly political. This shift was already announced in the thirties, when the most radical left-wing architects such as Hannes Meyer, Hans Schmidt or Ernst May were loosing influence and Le Corbusier gradually gained the upperhand. (Ciucci 1981) The Cold War climate only reinforced this evolution, with the formerly radical architects silenced or compromised, Gropius settling in his American situation, and a younger generation coming to the fore whose political outlook was basically shaped by the values of capitalism. (Moholy-Nagy 1965)

The change in tone can be observed in Giedion’s work too. Whereas his pre-war books had constructed an image of the Modern Movement which stressed it’s progressive and liberating ideals, his later works praise other values. His 1928 Bauen in Frankreich, Eisen, Eisenbeton for instance hailed Durchdringung – interpenetration – as the basic concept of the new architecture. The term refers to certain spatial configurations, but also evokes all kinds of metaphorical meanings. (Figure 4) It stands for a disabling of hierarchical models and for a weakening of borders, on all levels - social as well as architectural. In this manner a mutual relation is created between the new concept of space and a social reality. The new architecture thus was deliberately presented by Giedion as being closely bound up with social developments or even as anticipating them, the metaphorical use of the term Durchdringung contorting social mobility, emancipation and liberation.

In comparing his later (and more famous) Space, Time and Architecture (1941) to the earlier book, it is clear that his outlook changed rather fundamentally. Whereas in the first book the new architecture was bound up with processes of social emancipation, in Space, Time and Architecture this connotation was no longer crucial. The social implications that were inherent in Durchdringung were not transferred to the concept of space-time. Social and political connotations had been purged along with all references to social experiments and to the revolutionising aims of the new architecture. The shift became even more outspoken in the 1958 booklet Architecture You and Me, which records his post-war intellectual development by tracing his contributions to the CIAM debate. His main themes now had to do with aesthetic values, with the gap between creative art and the ruling taste, with the demand for imagination, with organically growing art. He closely followed the fascinations of the time, such as the interest in organic and primeval forms or the new regionalism evident in the work of Frank Lloyd Wright or Kenzo Tange. (Figure 5)

Giedion’s concerns at that time were shared with a lot of other important voices in the architectural discourse. In 1950 for instance Bruno Zevi published Towards an organic architecture, which states that organic architecture is planned for human happiness, not just in material terms, but also in psychological and spiritual terms. In 1954 Martin Heidegger’s remarkable essay on ‘Building, dwelling, thinking’ came out, which qualified ‘genuine building’ as something that cannot be objectified or discussed in technical terms, but rather had to do with a truthful, authentic relation of builder and inhabitant to the whole of reality, described as ‘the fourfold’ (heaven, earth, divinities, mortals). Heidegger initiated what Adorno critically called The Jargon of Authenticity: an idiom of speech that was full of references to thorough sounding concepts such as ‘the deeply human’ or ‘the genuine’, but that – according to Adorno at least – failed to address in any serious way conditions of social injustice and oppression.

It seems indeed as if in this period the big theme of architectural modernism ceased to be its social calling. The central focus now rather became the battle against the ruling taste, against kitsch. This is also discernible in the more provincial discourses that were conducted for example in Belgium. A critic like Albert Bontridder claimed in 1963 that “The courage of the creative capacity has become, in the domain of architecture, a crucial factor to escape from stagnation and to answer the needs of the immediate tomorrow.” (Bontridder 1963, 6) Around the same time, Geert Bekaert also advocated the idea of authenticity: “We must assume (…) the real beauty of life with its radical demand of authenticity and humanity.” (Bekaert 1985, 353) Whereas the pre-war generation of modernists had been convinced that the only resistance against their ideas came from a lack of knowledge and of openness, the post-war generation was confronted with the puzzling fact that resistance remained wide-spread and that the popular taste ran against their notions of sobriety and purity. They thus came to see the ‘ruling taste’ (Giedion’s term) as the main thing to overcome in their battle for modernism.

The search for authenticity ran parallel to a shift in what was seen as the most important commission for modern architects. If many in the pre-war period had agreed that social housing was the most crucial task architects faced, its importance now diminished in favour of a focus on individual houses and public buildings. As Joan Ockman has observed:

“If the great symbolic client of modern architecture had been the proletariat, heroic protagonist of an idealistic socialism, that of the period after [the war] was the middle class. (…) Focus shifted from production to consumption, marketing and ‘planned obsolescence’; from ‘revolutionary producers’ to a new class of consumers happy to leave behind the asperities of Existenzminimum, desirous of an ever higher standard of living and the leisure to enjoy it.”(Ockman 1993, 16)

Thus the realm of the individual home became of primary importance, in America as well as in Western Europe. And here, again, the effects of the Cold War were not negligible.

3. Domesticity as battle ground

According to Elaine Tyler May the celebration of home and family in the US in the immediate post-war period was greatly inspired by the Cold War. She sees a parallelism between the political doctrine of containment, which supposedly would put a limit to the impact of the Soviet Union, and the inward turn towards domestic values that characterised this era:

“Containment was the key to security. (…) The power of the Soviet Union would not endanger national security if it could be contained within a clearly-defined sphere of influence. But the term also describes the response to other postwar developments. The terrifying destructive potential of the atomic bomb would not be a threat if it could be contained, first in the hands of the United States and later through peaceful applications. (…) In the domestic version of containment, the ‘sphere of influence’ was the home. Within its walls, potentially dangerous social forces of the new age might be tamed, where they could contribute to the secure and fulfilling life to which postwar women and men aspired.” (May 1988, 13)

This parallelism was also played out in the famous 1959 kitchen debate between Richard Nixon, then vice-president of the US, and Nikita Khrushchev, premier of the Soviet Union. (Figure 6) The debate took place when Nixon visited the American National Exhibit in Moscow, which featured – alongside several other things (among them Steichen’s Family of Man) – a replica of an American kitchen. In front of this unlikely décor Nixon and Khrushchev argued about the relative merits of the socialist versus the capitalist model of society. For Nixon, the model kitchen full of appliances represented the quintessence of the American life-style, based upon a clear division of gender roles – male breadwinner, female homemaker- and a wide choice of consumer goods. He argued that the superiority of the American model was evident from the fact that Americans could enjoy such a comfortable home with such an abundance of commodities:

“There are 44 million families in the United States. Twenty-five million of (them) live in houses or apartments that have as much or more floor space than the one you see in the exhibit. Thirty-one million families own their own homes and the land on which they are built. America’s 44 million families own a total of 56 million cars, 50 million television sets and 143 million radio sets. And they buy an average of nine dresses and suits and 14 pairs of shoes per family and per year.” (quoted in May 1988, 163)

By 1959 the suburban model had conquered America. When the men who had fought the Second World War in Europe and in the Pacific came home, the women joyfully left their office jobs and their factories to make room for the men, and both succumbed to the domestic ideal of the suburban house on the small plot somewhere outside the city. All over America suburbia was being constructed on a massive scale, Levittown being only the best known of many of such immensely popular residential areas. (Figure 7) The suburban house was such a huge success because it embodied a series of values that were highly appreciated in this period: individual ownership, a well contained family which would secure warmth, love and protection, the possibility to indulge in an affluent lifestyle made affordable by the national economic prosperity (which in its turn was propelled by the massive demand for consumer goods such as washing machines and television sets), and the prospect of living in an harmonious neighbourhood among like-minded people - without that is the racial and social tensions thought typical of the inner cities.

The suburban model was exported to Europe too. Thanks to the Marshall plan economic reconstruction happened fairly rapidly in those countries that accepted American help. As part of the economic boost housing construction took off on a major pace. This housing construction happened in mainly two different modes: public housing and private initiative. In most countries of Western Europe the public housing programs were rather extensive, being part of the establishment of the welfare state. Such was the case e.g. in the Netherlands, France or the United Kingdom. Another huge part of the new housing stock was being built by private initiative, to cater for a market that increasingly opted for the suburban model already popular in the States. In Belgium, always an inbetween country, both modes were being stimulated – public housing by the law Brunfaut (1949) and private initiative by the law De Taye (1948). The law Brunfaut was pushed through by the socialist party, which was in favour of public initiative, whereas the law De Taeye was promoted by the catholic party.

Especially the law De Taye has had a major influence on the Belgian residential pattern. It encouraged small scale private initiative by offering subsidies to private builders, and setting up a mortgage system that allowed builders to borrow up to 90% of the value of their property. The effects of this law reached about 100 000 beneficiaries during the first 5 years, which meant 20 000 new dwellings annually built according to this system or about 75% of all new homes. Very specific for the Belgian system is that most of these dwellings were built not as part of a bigger scheme, but as a one-time enterprise initiated by the owner/inhabitant who hired an architect to design the house and a contractor to build it. The design of individual homes thus became the major occupation for Belgian architects.

The law De Taye was very much in tune with the values of private ownership and private initiative that were being heralded in the Cold War climate as distinguishing the Western model from the communist one. The catholic politician De Taeye argued that this law would allow the workers to make their dreams come true:

“One’s own yard is first and foremost the realization of a dream held dear by any worker, it is a form of small property. De small owner feels responsible for the continuation of his property that is part of the national patrimony. At the same time he feels more security, more independency, more self-reliance. Responsibility and self-reliance are at the basis of the development of the human person, which is our highest goal. In more practical terms responsibility and self-reliance are also crucial for private initiative and for the urge to save (…).” (quoted in Strauven 1983, 60)

The law for sure had a major impact and has allowed for a situation in which in Belgium, by now, about 70% of the people inhabit a house they own. It also was responsible for the enormous suburban sprawl that now characterises the landscape – especially in the Northern part of the country. This sprawl mostly consists of houses built according to popular taste which favours pitched roofs and a ‘rural’ outlook. (Figure 8) Among the tens of thousands of individuals homes thus built, however, there has always been a marginal amount designed by creative architects who came up with really remarkable products. This was a field in which modernist architects could and did excel, and in which they could pursue their longing for ‘authenticity’.

The life and work of Renaat Braem (1910-2001) is teemed with the contradictions and paradoxes that arose from this situation. A communist from his youth onwards, he was educated as an architect at the Academy in Antwerp, where he combined a rather traditional education with a lively interest for avant-garde experiments going on around him. His early designs already convey his fascination with constructivism and the work of Le Corbusier, with whom he landed an internship in 1935-1937. His writings of that time suggest that he belonged to the politically radical fraction of modernist architects, pleading for a total architecture, the result of an integration between all the arts, which would respond to the ideal of a socialist society and a new culture of tomorrow. Architecture, according to him, should visualize the possibilities of such a different society, bringing its inhabitants into liberated and open relationships with one another. (Strauven 1983, 32)

With this background, it is not surprising that Braem was among the best Belgian architects working in the public housing sector. His postwar social housing complexes are among the best that was produced in Belgium at the time. The Kiel estate in Antwerp (1949-1950) and the model quarter at the Heysel, Brussels (1957-1963) (Figure 9) are justly renowned for their innovative lay-outs and dwelling types. Although they have been criticized a lot in the contemporary conservative media as well as by post-modernist critics of the late seventies and eighties, they nevertheless remain standing among the most interesting experiments in social housing conducted in Belgium. According to Braem’s biographer Francis Strauven (who clearly prefers the Antwerp project to the Brussels one), both these projects were manifestations of Braem’s utopianism combined with a certain pragmatism and an urge to adapt the CIAM models to specifically local circumstances. Both were also manifestations of his belief that through architecture, inhabitants could be educated to tune in with socialism and to leave behind their old-fashioned life-styles and religious beliefs. If the latter belief soon proved to be untrue, Braem was too occupied with his public and private commissions to seriously think through the possible implications of this state of affairs for his political and architectural convictions.

Just like other Belgian architects, Braem took on mostly private assignments, building a multitude of individual, one-family dwellings. His first such commission was for his own home, built in 1935. (Figure 10) This is a modest, semi-detached dwelling with a garage, a studio for the office and a private garden. The house was designed as a constellation of prismatic volumes, with large glass surfaces opening to the garden and clearly influenced by the De Stijl aesthetics of Rietveld and Van Doesburg. It was austere, sober and functional, with a rational kitchen and living rooms that were adequate for a family of two (Braem and his wife did not have children). There was a light and airy dining room and a somewhat darker, more intimate area for sitting around the hearth – this corner sensually appealing through its different textures (brick chimney, heavy textiles, a soft floor) and decorative objects (like Mexican figures and shells). In this sensitive approach the search for authenticity is already recognizable – doing away with all kinds of representative and kitschy elements in the home, replacing them with ‘honest’ materials and references that directly appeal to the senses.

In the postwar period Braem designed such one-family houses in an increasingly naturalist and organicist formal language. Even though he never changed his political outlook, he considered the private dwelling “a shell for one family, the dwelling type that was, is and remains the most important problem for the art of building” (a statement dated 1954 – quoted by Strauven 1983, 32). Thus he was in a sense an enthusiast contributor to the making of the urban sprawl that covered Belgium, although he condemned the results of the Belgian laissez-faire politics on political and aesthetic grounds. This condemnation was most clearly stated in his 1968 booklet Het lelijkste land ter wereld (The ugliest country in the world). His criticism was clearly permeated by the jargon of authenticity:

“The tiny front yards of the De Taeye dwellings do not deliver space, nor nature, but a minimum version of pseudo-nature. The little houses themselves, regimented according to street plans drawn without any imagination or to the whim of land speculators, are usually built according to plans to which an architect contributed nothing but his signature. They offer nothing but pseudo-living space, a sheltered and enclosed place, but no space for dwelling.

Everything about them is false. The façade has nothing to do with the plan. (…)The façade is meant to give a semblance of affluence through fake stone lintels and ornaments. (…)Front yard lined with a gravel path which covers almost the entire space. In the remaining four square meters four tulips and one geranium, a picket fence of crumbling masonry with a small iron gate, which is beyond switching and therefore left permanently open. Exaggerated? Look around you. 99% of what was built after liberation looks like this. We were liberated from barbarity, but occupied by ugliness.” (Braem 1968, 45-46)

He advocated an architecture that would account for what he called the ‘sacred’ character of dwelling, an architecture that would dignify the home as a place where life is sanctified, where it is lived in a conscious way. In that way the proper basic values of building and dwelling could be respected instead of destroyed by a cacophony of forms. Remarkably, though, he aligned his call for authenticity and ‘sacredness’ with illustrations that depicted linear cities and huge megastructures containing a multitude of anonymous living units. (Figure 11) Braem’s discourse thus constituted a remarkable mixture of the modernist plea for honesty and genuineness with a politically motivated appeal for the collectivization of the land. In this argument the idea of ‘authenticity’ seamlessly merged with an anti-capitalist policy, which was rather exceptional among the post-war modernists. Not only was it exceptional, it also seemed somewhat inconsistent. For in those cases where he had most opportunity to design in a way that would account for the authenticity of dwelling – in the private dwellings that is – his formal language markedly differs from the one he applied in his big schemes for social housing or in his utopian drawings of future linear cities. His architecture thus seemed to imply that the authenticity strived for would vary in accordance with the social status of the clients – which admittedly is an odd conviction for a communist.

The contradictions prevalent in the life and work of Renaat Braem are a clear indication of the double bind in which modern architecture found itself in the postwar period in the West. On the one hand its protagonists continued to fight an ideological battle defending modern architecture’s superior qualities against a popular taste that increasingly favored other styles. To avoid an alignment with the politically ‘bad’ guys of communism, however, their arguments turned cultural, stressing more and more the issue of authenticity and less and less the social concerns that had been primordial in the pre-war period. On the other hand it was only after the war, in the reconstruction period, that modernist architects got the opportunity to build on a large scale the major housing schemes central to their pre-war agenda. The economical and material constraints applicable in those cases, however, usually prohibited the architects of demonstrating in any convincing way the ‘authenticity’ that supposedly was the hallmark of modern architecture. In a general sense, they thus failed to reach the goals they formulated for themselves, both in their private dwellings, which were never capable of appealing to a large public, and in their public housing, which turned technocratic and unidimensional to the point of utter tristesse.

References

Adorno, Theodor W., The Jargon of Authenticity, Northwestern University Press, Evanston, 1973

Aman, Anders, Architecture and Ideology in Eastern Europe during the Stalin Era. An Aspect of Cold War History, MIT Press, Cambridge (Mass.), 1992

Bekaert, Geert, Verzamelde Opstellen. 1. Stapstenen 1950-1965, Gent, 1985

Bontridder, Albert, Dialoog tussen licht en stilte, Helios, Antwerpen, 1963

Braem, Renaat, Het lelijkste land ter wereld, Davidsfond, Leuven, 1968

Ciucci, Giorgio, "The Invention of the Modern Movement", Oppositions, N° 24, 1981, pp. 69-91

Giedion, Sigfried, Bauen in Frankreich, Bauen in Eisen, Bauen in Eisenbeton, Klinkhardt & Biermann, Leipzig, 1928; translated by J. Duncan Berry, with an introduction by Sokratis Georgiadis, Sigfried Giedion, Building in France, Building in Iron, Building in Ferroconcrete The Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, Santa Monica (Cal.), 1995

Giedion, Sigfried, Space, Time and Architecture. The Growth of a New Tradition (1941), Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Mass.), 1980

Giedion, Sigfried, Architecture You and Me. The Diary of a Development, Oxford University Press, London, 1958

Heidegger, Martin, “Building Dwelling Thinking”, in Martin Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought, Harper & Row, New York, 1975

Heynen, Hilde, Architecture and Modernity. A Critique, MIT Press, Cambridge (Mass.), 1999

May, Elaine Tyler, Homeward Bound. American Families in the Cold War Era, BasicBooks, s.l., 1988

Moholy-Nagy, Sibyl, “The Diaspora”, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Vol. 24, N° 1, 1965, pp. 24-25

Ockman, Joan, Architecture Culture 1943-1968, Rizzoli, New York, 1993

Saunders, Frances Stonor, The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters, The New Press, New York, 2000

Strauven, Francis, Renaat Braem. Architect, AAM, Brussels, 1983

Teige, Karel, The Minimum Dwelling, translated and introduced by Eric Dluhosch, MIT Press, Cambridge (Mass.), 2002

Wharton, Annabel Jane, Building the Cold War. Hilton International Hotels and Modern Architecture, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2001

Zevi, Bruno, Towards an Organic Architecture, Faber and Faber, London, 195

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[1] Serge Guilbault for example examined the relationship between Cold War policies and abstract expressionism in How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art: Abstract Expressionism, Freedom and the Cold War (1983). Nora Sayre and Peter Biskind are among those who analysed Hollywood’s role in the Cold War. George Lipsitz looked at social patterns in Class and Culture in Cold War America (1982). See Robert Griffith’s essay on “The Cultural Turn in Cold War Studies” (http://american.edu/bgriff/rghome/TheCulturalTurn.htm - consulted 7 May 2004).

[2] Eric J. Sandeen, “The Family of Man on the Road to Moscow”, in Lori Lyn Bogle (ed.), The Cold War. Volume 5: Cold War Culture and Society, Routledge, London, 2001, pp. 57-72, quotation p. 62-63.

london hoje de manhã

Why it's kicking off in London

By Tamar Shlaim / 09 August 2011

You've probably heard it said a dozen times today: “It's like 28 Days Later out there.” Every thirty seconds, there's a new riot zone. I've rarely known the capital to be this wound up. It's kicked off in East Ham, then Whitechapel, then Ealing Broadway (really?), then Waltham Forest... It's kicked off in Croydon, then Birmingham, then (just a rumour so far) Bradford... The banlieues of Britain are erupting in mass civil unrest.  (Lenin's Tomb)

Tariq Ali, writing on the London Review of Books blog, asks the questions mainly absent from much of last night's coverage: 

Why is it that the same areas always erupt first, whatever the cause? Pure accident? Might it have something to do with race and class and institutionalised poverty and the sheer grimness of everyday life? The coalition politicians (including new New Labour, who might well sign up to a national government if the recession continues apace) with their petrified ideologies can't say that because all three parties are equally responsible for the crisis. They made the mess.

They privilege the wealthy. They let it be known that judges and magistrates should set an example by giving punitive sentences to protesters found with peashooters. They never seriously question why no policeman is ever prosecuted for the 1000-plus deaths in custody since 1990. Whatever the party, whatever the skin colour of the MP, they spout the same clichés. Yes, we know violence on the streets in London is bad. Yes, we know that looting shops is wrong. But why is it happening now? Why didn't it happen last year? Because grievances build up over time, because when the system wills the death of a young black citizen from a deprived community, it simultaneously, if subconsciously, wills the response.

Nina Power, writing for the Guardian yesterday summarises some of the specific circumstances in which the riots are taking place, and argues that it is imperative to take this context into account in any analysis:

The policies of the past year may have clarified the division between the entitled and the dispossessed in extreme terms, but the context for social unrest cuts much deeper. The fatal shooting of Mark Duggan last Thursday, where it appears, contrary to initial accounts, that only police bullets were fired, is another tragic event in a longer history of the Metropolitan police's treatment of ordinary Londoners, especially those from black and minority ethnic backgrounds, and the singling out of specific areas and individuals for monitoring, stop and search and daily harassment.

One journalist wrote that he was surprised how many people in Tottenham knew of and were critical of the IPCC, but there should be nothing surprising about this. When you look at the figures for deaths in police custody (at least 333 since 1998 and not a single conviction of any police officer for any of them), then the IPCC and the courts are seen by many, quite reasonably, to be protecting the police rather than the people....

Images of burning buildings, cars aflame and stripped-out shops may provide spectacular fodder for a restless media, ever hungry for new stories and fresh groups to demonise, but we will understand nothing of these events if we ignore the history and the context in which they occur.

Laurie Penny, blogging at Penny Red, writes eloquently against the lazy opposition of 'mindless violence' versus 'political protest'. 

Violence is rarely mindless. The politics of a burning building, a smashed-in shop or a young man shot by police may be obscured even to those who lit the rags or fired the gun, but the politics are there. Unquestionably there is far, far more to these riots than the death of Mark Duggan, whose shooting sparked off the unrest on Saturday, when two police cars were set alight after a five-hour vigil at Tottenham police station. A peaceful protest over the death of a man at police hands, in a community where locals have been given every reason to mistrust the forces of law and order, is one sort of political statement. Raiding shops for technology and trainers that cost ten times as much as the benefits you're no longer entitled to is another. A co-ordinated, viral wave of civil unrest across the poorest boroughs of Britain, with young people coming from across the capital and the country to battle the police, is another.

However, Penny argues, the riots are also a cathartic expression of power by those least used to wielding it: 

They cannot be stopped, and they know it..Most of the people who will be writing, speaking and pontificating about the disorder this weekend have absolutely no idea what it is like to grow up in a community where there are no jobs, no space to live or move, and the police are on the streets stopping-and-searching you as you come home from school. The people who do will be waking up this week in the sure and certain knowledge that after decades of being ignored and marginalised and harassed by the police, after months of seeing any conceivable hope of a better future confiscated, they are finally on the news. In one NBC report, a young man in Tottenham was asked if rioting really achieved anything:

“Yes,” said the young man. “You wouldn't be talking to me now if we didn't riot, would you?”

Visit Google Maps  to view all the areas affected in London so far.